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^artiarb College Xfinrorp

BRIGHT LEGACY

One half the income firom this Legacy, which Urat re-
ceired in 1880 under the will of

JONATHAN BROWN BRIGHT
of Waltham, MaMachosetts. Is to be expended for booka
for the College Librarjr. Tne other half of the income
la devoted to acholanhiM in Hanrard Unirertltj for the
benefit of detcendanti of

HBNRY BRIGHT, JR.,
Who died at Watertown. Massachusetts, in 1686. In the
absence of such descendants, other persons are eligible
to the sdiolarships. The irill requires tliat this announce-
ment shall be made In ererjr book added to the Librarjr
under its prorisions.

THE BEACON BIOGRAPHIES

*"" EDITED BY

M. A. DeWOLFE HOWE

JOHN BROWN

BY

JOSEPH EDGAR CHAMBERLIN

''''■'' /flmincnl Anwrirans , _j))

©

JOHN BROWN,

BY

JOSEPH EDGAR^HAMBERLIN/

BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD Gf COMPANY

MDCCCXCIX

'': 7 '3 1? . L-^ Copyright, 1899
A-

r 1 —

By Small^ Maynard ^ Company

[Incorporated)

232 . i>H J^-f^^)at:l^fkn(rs' Hall

-i'j s

ir. V

f\

•O/i/^a^yA

t^C/i.^'

I

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

MAR 1 1 1991

Press rf
George H. Ellis^ Boston

The photogravure used as a frontispiece
to this volume is from a photograph of a
daguerreotype which is supposed to have
been taken in Kansas in 1856, and which is
now in the possession of Mrs. Charles Fair-
child. The present engraving is by John
Andrew & Son^ Boston.

To
Mrs. GEOEGE L. STEAENS

PEEFACE.

To present a picture of the man, sepa-
rating him as much as possible from the
controversies and hatreds which commonly
rise up aJt the mention of his nams, and to
tell the story of his life plairUy, without
inquiry into the effect of his work, or any
further estimate and comparison, would be
quite enough to attempt in a biography of
John Broum of Osawatomie as brief as
this one mmst be. Broum' s sacrifice has
been classed sometimes with that of Jesus of
Nazareth; he has often been called mur-
derer, brigand, and traitor. He has been
written about much and weU, and for the
mmt part fiercely. It would seem that the
time has come for a calmer account of him,
given wUh no heat or bitterness. Both sides
of the controversy with which he concerned
himself so actively should have learned much
in forty years.

Yet the story of Brown is so strongly
simple, so utterly governed by an ideal, so

X PEEFACB

gUming and tragicdly that any one who fol-
lows U dosdy is likdy to find himself kind-
ling before he is aware of U.

JOSEPH EDGAR CHAMBEELIN.
Boston, October 15, 1899.

CHEONOLOGY.

1800
May 9. John Brown was born at Tor-
rington, Connecticut.

1805
His family removed to Ohio.

1816

Joined the Congregational church at

Hudson, Ohio.

1821

June 21. Married Dianthe Lusk.

1825

Appointed postmaster at Eandolph,

Peniisylvania.

1832

August 10. His first wife died.

1833
July 11. Married Mary Anne Day.

1835
Eeturned to Ohio.

1837
Swore his family to active opposition to
slavery.

xii CHEONOLOGY

1840
Made a trip to western Virginia to sur-
vey lands for Oberlin College.

1846
Eemoved to Springfield, Massachusetts,
as selling agent of the Western wool-
growers.

1847

Unfolded to Frederick Douglass a plan

for a negro insurrection in the Virginia

mountains.

1849

Went to England to sell wool, and vis-
ited the Continent.

Became associated with Gerrit Smith's
plan to colonize negroes on Adirondack
lands, and removed his family to a farm
at North Elba, on these lands.

1860
Thanksgiving Day. Addressed a meeting
of negroes at Springfield, and wrote to
his wife concerning it, suggesting a miU-
tant intention regarding slavery.

CHRONOLOGY xv

1859
January - March. Conducted a small
party of liberated Missouri slaves
through the Northwestern States to
Canada.

July 3. Appeared at Harper's Ferry.
Hired a £a>mi near there. Assembled
men and munitions.
October 16. Attacked and captured Har-
per's Ferry with his band.
October 17. Was attacked by United
States forces, wounded, and made pris-
oner.

October 26. Placed on trial at Charles-
towuy Voc.

November 2. Found guilty.
December 2. John Brown died on the
gallows.

JOHN BROWN

JOHN BROWN.

I.

John Bbown was born at Torrington,
Connecticut) on the ninth day of May,
1800, in a poor wooden house among the
round Appalachian hills which the man
loved, in a peculiar way, to the day
of his death. His father, a tanner and
shoemaker, had lived in that house and
township but a year when John Brown
was bom; but in the country within
the little circle made by Windsor, Can-
ton, Norfolk, Litchfield, and Torring-
ton, the father and all the folk had
been born and bred, and their fathers
before them. It was all a part of the
same land of round hills and winding
valleys, inhabited by the same hard-
working and fiercely thinking people.

Mr. W. E. Forster sums up well
enough the story of Brown's ancestry
when he says that he ^^was of the best
blood in America." Some careful gene-

2 JOHN BROWN

alogists have thrown a little doubt upon
his descent, as assumed by himself and
by everybody else who has written
about him, from Peter Brown, the car-
penter, who came over in the Mayflower.
I see no good r^on to doubt this de-
scent; but it makes little difference
whether his blood came down from this
man or not. He was at least descended,
like nearly all the people in his part of
Connecticut, from the remarkable colony
who settled "Windsor, Connecticut, and
who were in every way quite equal to
the Mayflxywer group. They were an
intensely pious and devoted band, care-
fully chosen, man by man and woman
by woman, '^especially that their efforts
might bring the Indians to the knowl-
edge of the gospel.'^ Apostles every
one of them, on their wajiT over in the
ship Mary and John they ''had preach-
ing and expounding the word of God
every day for ten weeks together."
They went on foot through the pathless

JOHN BEOWN 3

forest from Dorchester, Massachusetts, to
Windsor. They were five weeks on the
way, and winter closed in on them be-
fore their stuff and provisions could
come up the Connecticut by boats; and
then they starved and shivered and
prayed and preuched. Their sufferings
are a part of the story of John Brown.
These early apostles and martyrs were
compressed into him.

His grandfather was Captain John
Brown of the Eevolutionary army, who
died in the service in 1775. This grand-
father's wife, Hannah Owen, was of
Welsh descent. Our John Brown's
father was Owen Brown, bom in Canton,
Connecticut, in 1771. His mother was
Buth Mills, of Dutch descent ; but these
mothers, as well as the fathers, were
bred in the Yankee hills, and their
blood was well mixed with that of the
Puritan Yankees. John Brown, even
with his dash of Dutch and Welsh blood,
was a Yankee of the Yankees.

4 JOHN BEOWI^

Brown's mother, Euth Mills, was a
godly, sane woman, without a story.
His father, Owen Brown, emigrated in
1805 to Ohio, and there became a trus-
tee of Oberlin College. Hudson, the
place where he settled, in the Western
Eeserve, was then in the midst of a
wild country. There young John Brown
went to school to herdsmen and Indians,
learning of the herdsmen such mastery
of their trade that he drove great herds
of cattle long distances alone at an early
age, and of the Indians the arts of shoot-
ing and riding and dressing skins. He
did not learn here to hate the Indians, as
other frontiersmen did, but learned in-
stead to love them ; and years afterward
on the frontiers of Kansas they paid back
his love with kind services. In his little
Autobiography, sent in 1857 to young
Harry Stearns of Medford, and written,
throughout in the third person, there is
a note which shows that sensibility was
born in him : '* When John was in his

JOHN BROWN 5

Sixth year, a poor Indian boy gave him
a Yellow Marble, the first he had ever
seen. This he thought a great deal of,
and kept it a good while ; but at last he
lost it beyond recovery. It took years
to heal the wound, and I think he cried
at times about it.''

He had a rough time in this '^Uni-
versity of the West,'' as Thoreau called
his early life. He was dressed in buck-
skin and fars, and spent long days in the
woods, with only cattle or sheep for his
companions. He tells us that he was for
a time ''quite skeptical," but the Bible
triumphed over all the other books that
he was able to read ; and he tells, too,
of having the "free use of a good
library." He "joined the church"
(Orthodox Congregational) at Hudson,
Ohio, in 1816, and never wavered in his
Puritan belief. He was, he tells us,
"naturally fond of females" as a boy,
yet "difBident in their company." We
have evidence that in his mature life

6 JOHN BEOWN

women were always strongly drawn to
him, but in no sentimental way. His
life was unmarked by the faintest sug-
gestion of an irregular attachment.

He had next to no schooling. He
went at the age of about sixteen to his
birthplace in Connecticut^ and it was
then proposed to educate him for the
ministry. He attended for a time the
school of the Eev. Moses Hallock at
Plainfield, Massachusetts^ a school fa-
mous for turning out preachers and mis-
sionaries, and studied also at the Morris
Academy in Connecticut. But his train-
ing here was soon cut short by inflam-
mation of the eyes, and he went back
to Ohio and the tannery. With this
schooling, and, no doubt, with much
reading of old books and the Bible,
he picked up an admirable epistolary
style, clean cut and expressive, often
eloquent, showing thought about words
and fine discrimination in the use of
them. Bjs spelling was somewhat er-

JOHN BEOWN 7

ratic, but, barring a too free use of
capitals and peculiar punctuation, he
could have written a sermon or leading
article that would pass muster exceed-
ingly well at the present day. He
learned the tanner's and currier's trades,
and was foreman in his father's tannery.
He picked up, too, the surveyor's art,
and became proficient in this, so that
his surveys have stood the test of later
scrutiny. But the real love of his heart
was for the calling of the shepherd.
Early in his life, he says, he had an
"enthusiastic longing" for it; and in
his later life he returned to it as often
as he could. His casual memoranda
indicated that he thought more about
sheep than he did about anything else.
Joined with this love was the kindred
passion, which never left him, for fine
cattle and horses.

John Brown's mother died when he
was eight years old. His father soon re-
married, but John always mourned his

8 JOHK BROW]!f

own mother. He matured early, and as
a young man was described as of re-
markably fine and noble appearance.
As his father had done before him, he
married young, at the age of twenty;
and he is said to have had previously
one disappointment in love. His wife,
Dianthe Lusk, lived to the age of thirty,
having, in eleven years, borne him seven
children. She is said to have died in a
demented state ; and one or two of the
children of this marriage apparently
inherited from her a certain occasional
mental weakness. Even in the early
yeai-s of this marriage Brown followed
Puritan and patriarchal ways, — con-
ducting family worship, ruling his chil-
dren firmly, instructing them at his
knee, and singing hymns to them.

In 1825 Brown was made postmaster
at Eandolph, iPennsylvania, by President
Jackson. He also established a tannery
at that place, which he conducted evi-
dently with some suc<5ess. It was there

JOHl!^ BEOWN 9

that his first wife died, in 1832; and
there that^ a year afterward, he married
Mary Anne Day, the faithful, devoted,
wise and patient wife who survived him
twenty-five years. She bore him thirteen
children, seven of whom died very
young.

The large surviving family of chil-
dren of these two marriages, as well as
other persons who knew him, have left
abundant memories of his life and char-
acter. These represent him as head-
strong, but humane and kind, possessing
great tenderness and grave sweetness of
manner, and exceedingly fond of his
family. Though his children testify to
his use of the rod on a few occasions,
they affirm that he never applied it un-
justly. He was fond of music and sing-
ing. Sanborn says that he ^^sang a good
part," and tells of seeing him weeping
at a performance of Schubert's ^^ Sere-
nade.'^ He taught a singing-school for
a time at Korth Elba. He is said to

10 JOHN BEOWN

have been ^'rather dull in speecli,"
though when he was much interested he
spoke fluently enough, in a resonant and
somewhat metallic voice. He distrusted
utterly his powers as a public speaker,
though late in life he made several very
creditable addresses, and could engage
in religious exhortation.

John Brown was a trifle less than six
feet tall. He dressed neatly and plainly,
in a somewhat rustic and sober render-
ing of the fashion of the time. The best
description of his personal apx)earance is
Bronson Alcott's, made when Brown was
fifty-nine years old: "Nature obviously
was deeply intent in the making of him.
He is of imposing appearance, personally,
— tall, with square shoulders and stand-
ing ; eyes of deep gray, and couchant,
as if ready to spring at the least rustling,
dauntless yet kindly ; his hair shooting
backward from low down on his fore-
head ; nose trenchant and Bomanesque ;
set lips, his voice suppressed, yet metal-

JOHN BROWN 11

lie, suggesting deep reserves; decided
mouth ; the countenance and frame
charged with power throughout. ... I
think him about the manliest man I
have ever seen, — the tjrpe and synonym
of the Just.'' Others described his eyes
as '^blue-gray,'' and Dana found him.
''dark-complexioned.'' Brown never
wore the beard in which all the world
now sees his face until his fifby-eighth
year, when it helped him to a needed
disguise in Kansas. One or two of his
unbearded daguerreotypes make of him
a grimmer, less intellectual Emerson.
In the frontispiece of this book he is
shown in the height of his wild period
in Kansas, when fighting, exposure, and
fever had rendered him somewhat hag-
gard 5 but the picture brings us nearer
to the soul of the man, it seems to me,
than any other does.

Brown early began to shift about and
show the wandering characteristics which
afterward became so marked in him. In

12 JOHI^ BEOWN

1835 he went back to Ohio, took up
the tanning business there, bought wool,
raised fancy live-stock, including race-
horses, speculated very indiscreetly in
land, indorsed a note for a friend, failed
disastrously, and in his bankruptcy at-
tempted, in pursuance of a lawyer's
advice, to hold a farm against which
there was an attachment, and was ar-
rested on a peace warrant and taken to
Akron jail ; but the key does not appear
actually to have been turned on him.
He had pledged for his own benefit some
twenty-eight hundred dollars put in his
hands by the New England Woollen
Company for the purchase of wool 5 but
this he made no secret of, and was not
troubled on account of it by the com-
pany, which still trusted him. He was
all the rest of his life — and more, for
he left fifty dollars for the purpose in
his will — in paying up this debt. His
friends and business men in general went
on trusting him with large amounts of

JOHN BEOWN 13

money, which, in two or three cases, he
found it hard to repay. In 1840 he went
to Virginia — the portion of it on the
Ohio Eiver, now in West Virginia —
to survey some lands belonging to Ober-
lin College, and fell completely in love
with the country. From there he wrote
to his family, "I have seen the spot
where, if it be the will of Providence,
I hope one day to live with my family.''
These Virginia hills exercised upon
Brown a fascination which made it
easier, no doubt, for him to associate
with them his subsequent revolutionary
schemes.

In 1844 he formed, with a substantial
wool-grower and dealer, Simon Perkins,
of Akron, Ohio, a partnership which
continued for some years. Long after
Brown's death, Perkins summed up his
business qualifications thus: "He had
little judgment, always followed his own
will, and lost much money. I had no
controversy with John Brown, for it

14 JOHN BEOWN

would have done no good.'' Brown
bought much wool, and had the care of
the flocks of the firm. Perkins admits
that he was an expert in grading wools.
Indeed, as an instant and accurate clas-
sifier of fleeces, he seems to have won
an almost national reputation in the
trade.

In 1846 he was sent to live at Spring-
field, Massachusetts, as the agent of
sheep farmers of northern Ohio, Penn-
sylvania, New York, and Virginia. He
graded and sold their wool for them
direct to the manufacturers of New Eng-
land. He lived at Springfield, with
certain absences, some five years, carry-
ing on a considerable business, which he
finally brought to disaster by refusing
what seemed to him too small a price
offered for a large consignment of wool
from the Ohio growers, and taking the
wool to England in order to get a larger.
There he obtained, instead of a better
figure, only half the price which had

JOHN BEOWN 15

been offered him in New England.
This bankrupted him again, and really
ended his commercial career. The very
same wool which he carried to England
was bought to be shipped back to
America, and was so shipped. It was
one of the most picturesque failures of
a bold stroke of business on record.

After this Brown removed with his
family to North Elba., in the Adirondack
mountains of northern New York, where
he was interested in an experiment which
G^rrit Smith, the rich abolitionist and
philanthropist, was making in the set-
tling of negroes on wild land.

North Elba continued to be the home
of Brown's family until after his death,
though he himself lived there very little.
The wanderings of his apostolate, fol-
lowing his mercantile travels, had now
begun. Thenceforth he farmed and
shepherded here and there to supply
his own and his family's immediate
needs. There are indications, in his

16 JOHN BROWN

abounding correspondence, that he had
sometimes dreamed, in the years before
1850, of making a fortune in business;
but after that it is clear that he had
quite another end in view.

II.

What made John Brown an aooli-
tionist, and when and why did his abo-
litionism take its strenuous, militant,
and x>eculiar formt The psychology of
his apostleship is a strange and interest-
ing study. He was never in the current
of the anti-slavery movement. Though
we shall see that he regarded himself,
and that his family regarded him^ as
devoted in a sx>ecial way to n^ro eman-
cipation, there is no documentary evi-
dence, no proof from the man's own
letters or written memoranda or act^
that the movement ^' took hold of him ''
at all actively before his fiftieth year.
That he was deeply sympathetic with
the enslaved blacks all his life is ]^r-
fectly incontestable, and that he felt
himself especially devoted to the cause
of their liberation as far back as 1837 we
know on the testimony of his wife and
children.

18 JOHN BEOWlSr

For that matter he was bom an abo-
litionist. His father had been one before
him. The motive-spring of John Brown's
abolitionism was touched in the year
1790, when the Rev. Samuel Hopkins,
of Rhode Island, a man whose opposition
to negro slavery was practical and well
known, and who was one of the earliest
of the abolitionists, visited the Rev.
Jeremiali Hallock at Canton, Connec-
ticut. Young Owen Brown (John
Brown's father), then nineteen years
old, lived with Hallock, probably as a
sort of privileged helper, and heard
Hopkins talk against negro slavery,
'^denouncing it as a great sin." Hop-
kins was a man of native power. He
made a life convert of young Owen
Brown, who afterward taught his own
children abolitionism at his knee. There
had been a chance for the development
in the boy John Brown of the bent which
gave rise to the touching incident so
vividly related in his own autobiograph-

JOHN BEOWN 19

ical letter to young Harry Stearns, al-
ready referred to, written in 1857 :
"During the war with England [1812-
1815] a circumstance occurred that in
the end made him a most determined
abolitionist, and led him to declare, or
swear, eternal war with slavery. He
was staying for a short time with a very
gentlemanly landlord, since a United
States marshal, who held a slave boy
near his own age, — very active, intelli-
gent and good feeling, — and to whom
John was under obligations for numer-
ous little acts of kindness. The master
made a great pet of John, — brought
him to table with his first company and
Mends, called their attention to every
little smart thing he said or did, and to
the fact of his being more than a hun-
dred miles from home with a company
of cattle alone; while the negro boy
(who was folly, if not more than his
equal) was badly clothed, poorly fed
and lodged in cold weather, and beaten

20 JOHN BEOWN

before his eyes with iron shovels or any-
thing that came first to hand. This
brought John to reflect on the wretched,
hopeless condition of fatherless and
motherless slave children; for such
children have neither fathers nor mothers
to protect and provide for them. He
sometimes would raise the question, Is
God their father f'

John Brown, Jr., born in 1821, ssljs
that his own earliest recollection is of his
father sheltering runaway slaves. While
he was postmaster at Bandolph^ Pennsyl-
vania, John Brown made his house a
refuge for such runaways, and in a letter
to his brother Frederick, in 1834, he un-
folded a scheme for procuring the adop-
tion in Northern families of " negro boys
or youth,'' who were to be brought up
as the children of these families were,
and educated with them. '^ Christian
slaveholders were to be prevailed upon,
if possible, to release slave boys for this
purpose." Failing such means, Brown

JOHN BEOWN 21

said, ''We have all agreed to submit
to considerable privatiou to buy one.''
In this letter he wrote, ''If the young
blacks of our country could once become
enlightened, it would most assuredly
operate on slavery like firing powder
confined in a rock.'' All this was very
X)eacefal. Brown was evidently reflect-
ing on Nat Turner's poor insurrection in
1831, and the numerous other attempts
up to that time, all of which had failed
for the want of adherence on the part of
the blacks themselves to the movements
stirred up in their behalf. Very evi-
dently, he saw that the time had not yet
come to attack slavery by force, — that
the negroes themselves must be prepared
for it

After Brown returned to Ohio to live,
he was a member of the Congregational
church at Franklin. He had a re-
spectable negro man and woman work-
ing for him. They sat at his table, and
on Sunday he took the pair into his pew.

22 JOHN BBOWK

The preacher and congregation angrily
objected to this. Brown left the church
on account of it ; and though he was all
his life a devout Calvinist, conducting
family worship daily and sometimes
^* exhorting" in public, he never be-
longed to another church. This cer-
tainly shows that at this period there
was no want of earnestness in his devo-
tion to the blacks.

In 1837 there occurred the episode
which first indicated Brown's intention
to attack slavery vi et armis. His chil-
dren have testified that in that year he
assembled them one day at family prayer,
swore them all to work with him for the
emancipation of the slaves, and^ kneeling
on the floor, invoked the blessing of God
on the undertaking. There is no reason
to believe thskt either Brown or his chil-
dren forgot this compact. He seems
never to have reminded his sons of it,
nor to have been under the necessity of
doing so. His children were not relig-

JOHIf BROWN 23

ions in the way he was religious. They
were, for the most part, inclined to free
thought } and their disinclination to make
a profession of religion gave him great
sorrow. He never, in his letters, ceased
to implore them to do so. They did not
in the least depend for the seconding of
their devotion to him in this anti-slavery
work upon the invocation of a kind of
religious ceremony. They were quite
ready to give up their lives at the in-
spiration of their own sense of duty and
their strong personal loyalty and devo-
tion to their father.

After this solemn pledge. Brown went
on with his wool business and his farm-
ing, travelled almost incessantly between
East and West, and set down in his little
memorandum book many recipes for cur-
ing diseases of sheep, and some wise saws,
but never a word applicable to the cause
of the blacks. He sent home scores of
letters, many of which have been pre-
served carefully ; and in them there is

24 JOHN BROWI^

much connected with his business and
with the fanning and stock-raising oper-
ations at homC; and much about religion
and morality. But until a much later
date there is nothing in them about the
slaves. He went to Boston in 1838, but
is not known to have visited any of the
abolitionists, though from his Yirginia
prison, years afterward, he wrote: ^^I
once set myself to oppose a mob in Bos-
ton where she [Lucretia Mott] was.
The meeting was, I think, in Marl-
borough street Church.'' The Marl-
borough chapel was burned in May,
1838. His note-book contains seven
Boston business addresses, and memo-
randa of business undertakings. There
is no reason to suppose that he ever
took or read the LQ>eraJbory and in all
that he ever wrote I discover but a sin-
gle reference to any one of the great
abolitionist leaders of I^ew England.

He had in him, in business matters,
a bit of native Yankee craft. A letter

JOHlJf BROWN 26

of admonition to his son John when this
young man went into the business of
buying wool warns him against all the
dishonest wiles of the sellers of wool,
and coaches him in some of the careful
tactics of the buyers.

I have mentioned his trip to Europe
in 1849. While he was there, he did
some highly unsuccessfol wool business,
as we have seen, wrote home to his son
something about the live-stock, the mut-
ton, the architecture and habits of the
English, but had never a word to say
about the English friends of the blacks
and their work. He made a hasty trip
to the Continent, and there, as he after-
ward told Mr. Sanborn, made some study
of military matters, and visited some of
Napoleon's battlefields. He ''had fol-
lowed the military career of Napoleon
with great interest,'' — that is evident
from all his children's account of his
reading, — and he even ventured to criti-
cise Bonaparte in some points. Brown

26 JOHN BROWI^

had acquired, undoubtedly deriving the
idea in the first instance from the Bible
story of Gideon's sifting of his five-and-
twenty thousand men down to three hun-
dred, a view greatly in favor of small
and extremely mobile bodies of men.
He had made as close study as his
opportunities permitted of the art of
intrenching such small bodies of men
and fortifying their positions. But he
certainly never had practical knowledge
of any other form of warfare than the
guerilla campaigning which he practised
in Kansas.

III.

Frederick Douglass says that Brown
unfolded to him in 1847 a plan for insur-
rectionary work among the negroes, with
headquarters in the Virginia mountains.
This is another indication, one of many,
that he entertained the insurrectionary
purpose. But his plans remained in
abeyance. His later and active interest
in the anti-slavery cause seems to have
flashed up into a sudden flame about
the year 1850. From that time for-
ward his letters abound with references
to the subject; his memorandum book
contains entries associated with his work
in that field, and the motive becomes
clearly apparent in his acts. Did
Brown's discovery of his own unfit-
ness to be a man of business help him
to see more clearly his way toward de-
voting the remainder of his life to the
freeing of the blacks ! Did he conceive
an ambition to be a great liberator, and

28 JOHN BEOWK

acquire world-wide fame as the Moses of
a whole people ! I suppose that an in-
quiry whether Brown was ever animated
by a personal ambition for power or
fame would be entirely fair, especially
since, as ambitions go, a purpose to
attain power or fame in this way would
surely be a worthy one.

For that matter the question would
seem to be easily answered. A man
who is at once meditative, intense, and
fond of reading as Brown was, and yet
uneducated in the liberal sense, is made
by his books. What books did Brown
read! Dana found that he had many
in his Adirondack cabin. His daughter
has written : ^^ My dear father's favorite
books of a historical character were
Eollin's Ancient History, Josephus,
Plutarch's Lives, ^Kapoleon and his
Marshals,' and the life of Oliver
Cromwell. Of religious books, Baxter's
^Saint's Best' (in speaking of which at
one time he said he could not see how

JOHIf BEOWN 29

any person could read it through care-
fully without becoming a Christian), the
^Pilgrim's Progress,' and Henry ^On
Meekness.' But above all others the
Bible was his favorite volume, and he
had such a perfect knowledge of it that
when any one was reading it he would
correct the least mistake." The daugh-
ter appends a list of his favorite passages
in the Bible. ITearly all of them refer
to the poor and to 'Hhem that are in
bonds.'' He was fond of the Apocrypha,
and doubtless had pleasure in the war-
like deeds therein reported. His daughter
records that one of his favorite hymns
was ^^ With songs and honors sounding
loud," and another, ^* Blow ye the trum-
pet." But there is one point, one item
of his Scriptural reading, which affords
us a special insight. One of his com-
panions at Harper's Ferry, John B.
Gook, who had lived closely with him
for a long time, has left the statement
that "the Bible story of Gideon had a

y"

30 JOHN BROWI^

great influence on Brown.'' It is mani-
fest that it had. If we read this fine
story in the book of Judges in the light of
Brown's long brooding over the Script-
ures, and also in the light of his sub-
sequent career and acts, noting as we
go his organization of the League of
Gileadites among the negroes, we find
that we can understand Brown much
better than we could without this
knowledge. The story fired his intense
spirit and prompted his actions again
and again. He belonged to the epoch
of Gideon rather than to the nineteenth
century.

That he aspired to do for the blacks
what Gideon did for the children of
Israel does not prove that he was actuated
by personal ambition. It indicates the
stirring of a sentiment in him which
was something like personal ambition;
yet, if he really had a dream of earthly
fame and greatness, he suppressed it, and
acted as if he had no such dream. In a

JOHIf BEOWl^ 31

great measure he separated himself from
men, and carried on his work alone. In
spite of his magnificent moral strength
and the fact that all the men who came
close to him, after the anti-slavery move-
ment fully fired him, at once recognized
his power, he never had above twenty-
two men attached to his cause and per-
son! Here was the sifting process of
Gideon carried farther than Gideon car-
ried it. The thing which we ordi-
narily call ambition should, first of all,
have sent him on his revolutionary way
earlier; and after that it should have
put into him at least something of the
craft which wins crowds.

In Springfield, Brown either fell in
with, or else assembled, a circle of ciol-
ored men, part of them refugees from
slavery, and others presumably the
bright Northern mulattoes who were
eager to do what they could for the free-
dom of their brothers in the South,
though apparently they could not bring

32 JOHN BEOWN

themselves to anything really revolu-
tionary. One of these men, a refugee
from Maryland; named Thomas Thomas,
worked for Brown as porter in his wool
warehouse. Thomas declares that at the
very outset of his employment in the
warehouse Brown communicated to him
the general features of a scheme to liber-
ate the slaves by force, and asked him
to join the enterprise. This was early
in 1846. Much doubt has been cast
upon the accuracy of Thomas's recollec-
tion. But Brown was sometimes un-
fathomable, and he may have seen some-
thing in this negro porter which led him
to reveal more of his inner thoughts to
him than he had ever revealed to any
one else.

I have already mentioned the scheme
of Gerrit Smith to give a hundred thou-
sand acres of Adirondack land to negro
people who should settle upon and culti-
vate small farms on the tract. It was
a foolish idea; for latitude and alti-

JOHN BBOWN 33

tade made these lands the most arctic
spot, of an equal area, within the proper
limits of the United States. [N'either
maize nor wheat will thrive there. The
lands are rough and sterile. 'No place
more unfit for the colonization of the
soft and unenterprising blacks could
have been found. But Smith's scheme
instantly attracted Brown's sympathy.
Loving these hills so much, they also
drew him to them of their own force.
The shepherd of other days, homesick
for the hills and the soil, saw in Smith's
scheme a chance to do good to the ne-
groes, while he himself returned to the
life he loved best. He visited Mr.
Smith, proposed to take up some of the
land for himself and his children, and to
guide and superintend the work of the
black colony. SmitJi promptly accepted
his services; and in 1848 and 1849,
without 85 yet giving up his business at
Springfield, Brown moved his family
into a rude cabin in those great Korth

34 JOHIf BEOWK

Woods, at a place called — whether or
not as the result of Brown's partiality
for Napoleon I do not know — ITorth
Elba. Here Brown's wife and youngest
children continued to live until 1864.
He himself spent most of his time at
Springfield or elsewhere, with occa-
sional visits to the I^orth Elba farm.
The life there was pioneering of a sort
only less stern than that which Brown
and his sons entered upon subsequently
in Kansas. He found the work of coach-
ing negroes in ITorthem agriculture quite
discouraging, and apparently had to take
several of these people into his own
cabin. Charles A. Dana, on a visit
there, found several negroes at Brown's
table, to whom he was introduced in
due form : ^^Mr. Dana, 'Mr. Jefferson ;
Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Dana," and so on.
There was never any hypocrisy in Brown,
in this regard or any other : the negro
at his board was the equal of any guest.
All this and more Brown could do for

JOHN BROWK 35

the negro. But up to this time we do
not see him preparing or threatening an
armed conflict. And the very first plain
reference in his correspondence to the
great movement which had for years
engrossed many great minds occurs in
a letter from Springfield, Massachusetts,
to his wife at North Elba, dated Nov. 28,
1850. It is important as marking a
turning-point in Brown's life, and it is
also so curiously like him in its diction
and matter that it is worth quoting : —

^^Dear Wife, — . . . Since leaving home
I have thought that, under all the cir-
cumstances of doubt attending the time
of our removal, and the possibility that
we may not remove at all, I had perhaps
encouraged the boys to feed out the
potatoes too freely. ... I want to have
them very careful to have no hay or
straw wasted, but I would have them
use enough straw in bedding the cattle
to keep them from lying in the mire.
I heard from Ohio a few days since ;

36 JOHN BEOWN

all were then well. It now seems that
the Fugitive Slave Law was to be the
means of making more abolitionists than
all the lectures that we have had for
years. It really looks as if Qod had his
hand on this wickedness also. I of
course keep encouraging my colored
friends to ^ trust in God and keep their
powder dry.' I did so to-day, at
Thanksgiving meeting, publicly. . . .
While here, and at almost all places
where I stop, I am treated with all
kindness and attention ; but it does not
make home. I feel lonely and restless,
no matter how neat and comfortable my
room and bed, nor how richly loaded
may be the table ; they have few charms
for me, away from home. I can look
back to our log cabin at the centre of
Bichfield, with supper of porridge an(l
Johnny-cake, as a place of far more in-
terest to me than the Massasoit of Spring-
field."
This leads me to the reflection that

JOHN BEOWN 37

Brown, in the matter of abstemiousness,
was somewhat idealized by Emerson and
Thoreau, who met him when he was at
the stage of his highest exaltation in the
anti-slavery work and fresh from the
fields and camps of Kansas. All they
said of him was true, I have no doubt ;
yet it was hardly true of his whole life.
Brown always lived very plainly 5 and
his house and table at Springfield, at the
time when money was most plentiful with
him, were extremely simple. Yet he
was normally fond of good viands. His
household diet, though so simple, con-
sisted largely of meat; and the praise
that he sent home of the English mutton,
when he was abroad, could only have
come from a man who knew good mut-
ton. Though absolutely temperate, he
was not a total abstainer, and kept wine
in his house for cases of illness. Eed-
path, who was not careful, says Brown
"never drank spirits.'' Sanborn, who
is careful, says he "seldom drank

38 JOHN BEOWN

spirits." He had a way, when travel-
ling on business, of putting up at the
best hotels. He seems to have been, in
fact, a sane, sound, sensible man in most
of these material particulars, and not at
all inclined to eccentric notions. The
hasty way in which he has been ideal-
ized, as if his fame were likely to be
increased by representing him as sub-
jecting himself to petty and unnecessary
martyrdoms, is amusingly illustrated by
the frequent statement that he was so
habitually abstemious and unaccustomed
to luxuries that he refused to eat butter
on his bread. The fact was that he
never liked butter and cheese, and could
not eat them. Sanborn relates that as a
boy, ten years old, he was once sent on
an errand to a place where a lady gave
him a piece of bread and butter. He
dared not tell her that he could not eat
butter ; but "as soon as he was out of the
house he ran as fast as he could for a
long time, and then threw the bread and
butter out of sighf

JOH]^ BROWN 3^

Brown had now (1850) ten children,
seven of whom were sons. He had lost,
to his deep and evident sorrow, seven
children, all of whom had died in in-
fancy or early childhood. Two more
were yet to be born. His older sons he
had educated simply ; the eldest, John
Jr., with some care at good schools. His
faithful wife taught the little ones at the
cabin at North Elba. Brown for a time
went out to Ohio and engaged in farm-
ing, where he could get more money for
his labor than in the Adirondack hills.

But before he left Springfield, in 1851,
he wrote a letter of instruction to the
"branch of the United States League
of Gileadites'' there, — a band of his
colored fellow-conspirators against slav-
ery, — which proves definitely enough
that he had taken up with a thoroughly
revolutionary doctrine. Mason's Fugi-
tive Slave Act had been passed, and the
hunting down of negro fugitives had
bogun in Massachusetts. Brown was now

40 JOHN BEOWN

folly aroused* He told these negroes,
in a manuscript document still extant,
that they were fully justified in reisisting
any law which tried to send them back
into slavery. His pronunciamento is a
strange mixture of the principles of the
Carbonari and Eavachol and the lan-
guage of the Hebrew Scriptures. The
reference to Mount Oilead and the
suggestion for the name of the society
are from his own great Bible story of
Oideon : —

'^Should one of your number be
arrested, you must collect together as
quickly as possible so as to outnumber
your adversaries who are taking an
active part against you. Let no able-
bodied man appear on the ground un-
equipx>ed or with his weapons exposed
to view. ••• Your plans must be known
only to yourself, and with the under-
standing that all traitors must die where-
ever caught and proven to be guilty.
^Whosoever is fearful or jrfraid, let

JOHN BROWN 41

him return and part early from Mount
Gilead^ (Judges vii. 3: Deuteronomy
XX. 8). . . . Do not delay one moment
after you are ready: you wiU lose aU your
resolution if you do. Let tJie first bloiv he
the signal for all to engage, and, when en-
gagedj do not do your work by halves^ hut
make clean work with your enemies. , . . By
going about your business quietly, you
will get the job disposed of before the
number that an uproar would bring to-
gether can collect. . . . You may make
a tumult in the court-room where a trial
is going on by burning gunpowder freely
in paper packages, if you cannot think
of any better way to create a momentary
alarm, and might possihly give one or more
of your enemies a hoist.^^

5rown seems to have hoped to unite
the negroes all over the country, now or
afterward, in this revolutionary move-
ment; but he failed. There is no sign
that they ever anywhere followed his
words of advice. Yet he was not igno-

42 JOHN BEOWN

rant of the weaknesses of the African
race. He published about this time, in
an abolitionist paper called the Barn's
Roruj a clever satire on the negro
character, entitled '^ Sambo's Mistakes.''
The manuscript is still preserved, in
Brown's undoubted handwriting. It was
evidently intended for an admonition.
Or did it merely express a great misgiv-
ing with regard to the negro race which
had entered Brown's intuitively working
mindt It represents Sambo as shallow,
vain, *' fond of joining societies," bound
to spend his money and remain poor,
disputatious about things of no moment,
tenacious of small points of difference,
fond of gewgaws, self-indulgent, obse-
quious to the whites, and more inclined
to fight over religious tenets than for his
own liberty.

'^Sambo's Mistakes" is said to be
Brown's longest literary composition.
It is surely a little masterpiece in its
way. It has a certain prophetic value,

JOHN BROWIif 43

too: the abolitionists of that day were
so sure that the negroes needed only to
be made free to be fitted for freedom !
At this late day, we who are the chil-
dren of the ardent abolitionists of that
earlier period can only sigh when we
read such a glorious psean as Emerson's
address, Aug. 1, 1844, at the first an-
niversary of the emancipation of the
negroes of the British West Indies.
He joyfully took it for granted that
the blacks of Jamaica and Barbados
had already successfully taken up the
burden of civilization with perfect in-
dustry and perfect quietness, and that
^^all disqualifications and distinctions of
color had ceased" 5 and, in following
the notion of Swedenborg as to the
spiritual superiority of the African, he
said: ^^I esteem the occasion of this
jubilee to be the proud discovery that
the black race can contend with the
white ; that, in the great anthem which
we caU history, a piece of many parts

44 JOHlir BEOWN

and vast compass, after playing a long
time a very low and subdued accom-
paniment, they perceive the time ar-
rived when they can strike in with effect
and take a master's part in the music.
The civility of the world has reached
that pitch that their more than moral
genius is becoming indispensable, and
the quality of this race is to be honored
for itself.''

Alas! is there a keener sorrow than
fot the children of the men who held
this hope, and lived and died upon it,
to have to ask themselves, Has the negro
question been changed in any essential
respect by emancipation and enfranchise-
ment t Have those great things done
any good to a people who could not do
the good for themselves f

The misgiving expressed by Brown
himself in this clever little essay on
"Sambo's Mistakes" is, to me, a proof
of his clear intuition. The fact that he
utterly disregarded the suspicion in his

JOHN BEOWN 45

life and work is a proof that his idealism
was perfect. He marched straight on
with his simple purpose, arguing no
more, but living out his frank accept-
ance of his own doctrine. Events soon
made a veritable scourge, a man of
weapons and bloodshed, out of this
peaceable shepherd, this thrifty buyer
and expert sorter of fleeces.

His sons John, Jason, Owen, Fred-
erick, and Salmon went to Kansas, as
settlers in good faith, in 1854 and 1855.
Their emigration was hard, painful^ full
of privations. Jason's boy, four years
old, died on the way. They took with
them almost no weapons, but as many
tools, fruit-trees, and grape-vines as they
could carry. There seems to have been
in the removal no prompting of their
father nor any distinctly warlike inten-
tion on their own part. Brown had
written to his son John, when the boys
were talking of going : "If you or any
of my fiEbmily are disposed to go to

46 JOHN BEOWN

Kansas or Nebraska with a view to help
defeat Satan and his legions in that di-
rection, I have not a word to say ; but
I feel committed to operate in another
part of the field.'' Just what he meant
by this last reference can only be
guessed. Sanborn believes that he was
already thinking of Virginia 5 and San-
born knew the man well at that time,
and has gone more deeply into his life
than any other writer. The sons "lo-
cated" not far from a place called Osa-
watomie, and lived first in tents, then
in rude huts. Fever and hunger over-
took them. They were near the border
of Missouri, and at the very seat of the
struggle between the Pro-slavery and
Free State influences.

The issue there was simply this. Kan-
sas had lately been opened to settlement.
Although slavery within the territory
had, as was supposed, been forever pro-
hibited by the Missouri Compromise of
1820, "the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854

JOETNT BEOWN 47

established what was known as ^^ Squat-
ter Sovereignty '' ; that is, it empowered
the settlers to determine by majority
vote whether the Territory should be
slave or free. So the opposing forces
in the great controversy, practically the
Korth against the South, set themselves
to determine the future of Kansas by
settling the Territory with their own
people and followers. Northerners and
Southerners as they came in — "Free
State'' the ones, "Pro-slavery'' the
others — confronted each other with hos-
tility. It was really war from the start.
In this war the Brown brothers soon
found themselves involved; and John,
Jr., wrote back to his father to pro-
cure and send to them arms fit to fight
with. They also soon asked him to
come and help them. He answered
that he might like to go ; but his agri-
cultural affairs were in such a state that
he could not do so unless he could sell
some cattle and get pay for some others

48 JOHN BEOWK

that he ha»d sold. On the contrary, he
removed from Ohio back to ITorth Mba.
On his way he attended an anti-slavery
convention at Syracuse, ITew York,
June 28, 1855. Here, and at this date,
his war with force and arms really
began ; for he raised some money from
Glerrit Smith and others with which to
arm ^^ his sons and other friends in Kan-
sas.'' He spent some of the money for
rifles, and sent them on.

Brown himself went to Kansas in Sep-
tember, 1855, travelling in a wagon be-
yond the Mississippi. He wrote pictur-
esque accounts of the journey to his wife
and children at Korth Elba. I note this
natural touch in one letter by the way :
"We fare very well on crackers, her-
ring, boiled eggs, prairie chicken, tea,
and sometimes a little milk. Have three
chickens now cooking for our breakfast
We shoot enough of them on the wing
as we go along to supply us with fresh
meat. Oliver succeeds in bringing them

JOHN BROWN 49

down quite as well as any of us.'' This
boy Oliver, one of his second wife's chil-
dren, was then sixteen years old, and
no doubt was to the mother as the apple
of her eye 5 and the reference is a pretty
one. Oliver was killed fighting at Har-
per's Ferry four years later. Brown
liked this sort of life and travel as well
as any Indian or gypsy that ever lived.
Farther on in the same letter he said,
'^ With all the comforts we have along our
journey^ I think, could I hope in any
other way to answer the end of my
being, I would be quite content to be at
North Elba." And from now on we
shall not miss references to his liberating
mission.

IV.

Arrived in Kansas in October, 1855,
Brown went actively to work at break-
ing up the soil. All his people had
fever and ague. The cold and stormy
winter was spent wretchedly in a tent
banked about with earth. Brown's wife
and little children, for their part, were
living at K'orth Elba in a cold house, and
suffering much. Brown wrote pityingly
to his wife, and said, '^May Grod abun-
dantly reward all your sacrifices for
the cause of humanity !'' The patient
woman was content. About him there
were frequent killings of Free State
men by the ^'Border Euffians,'' and
Brown was soon involved hotly in the
Free State men's reprisals. The Emi-
grant Aid Company of New England
were sending settlers into E^ansas with
the object of outnumbering and out-
voting the Pro-slavery settlers. They
also sent rifles out to help their settlers

JOHN BEOWN 51

make some headway against the Mis-
sourians, who did not come as settlers,
but rode across the line into the terri-
tory to vote fraudulently, to shoot and
rob, and to ride back to the security of
their homes in a slave State. Brown
bestirred himself promptly against these
invaders, and in December, 1855, was
made captain of a band organized to
resist a Missourians' raid on the Free
State town of Lawrence. The raiders
were repulsed ignominiously, after kill-
ing one settler. Brown described in a
letter to his wife the heart-rending scene
when the wife of the murdered man,
whose body the Free State men had
found, was brought in to see him.

In a letter written in February, 1856,
Brown showed that he had no respect
for the federal authority, which was
doing its best to bolster up the slavery
cause in Blansas. " We hear,'' he said,
^Hhat Frank Pierce means to crush the
men of Kansas. I do not know how

52 JOHN BEOWN

well lie may succeed ; but I think lie
may find his hands full before it is all
over." Brown had at times in his life
— very few the times were, as must be
admitted — expressed some veneration
for the Constitution and the fiag; but,
when these got in the way of his purpose
and his conscience, the President became
"Frank Pierce" and nothing more, and
the flag had little resx>ect from him. He
certainly did his best in Kansas to bring
on a clash with the federal arms ; and
it is worth noting that in March, 1866,
the abolitionist Congressman from Ohio,
John E. Giddings, wrote to him urging
that such a clash be brought about, and
asserting that it "would light up the
fires of civil war throughout the North."
There is reason to believe that this was
what Brown had already desired, be-
lieving firmly that nothing would bring
about negro emancipation but an armed
conflict. There was a conservative party
among the Free State men in Kansas ;

JOHN BEOWN 53

and those conservatives soon became
aware that they had among them an
extremist in Old John Brown — as he
began to be called for the sake of dis-
tinction, since his son John, who had
been elected a member of the Free State
legislature, was acquiring prominence,
and was inclined to more moderate views
than his father.

There were now two legislatures in the
Territory, one Free State and the other
Pro-slavery, each accusing the other of
unlawful usurpation. Bands of armed
men representing both sides had gone
into camp. Brown himself took to rang-
ing and bushwhacking, and acquired a
reputation for cool, brave, and clever
exploits. One of the neatest of these
was his marching, with one or two of
the youngest of his boys, in May, 1856,
into the camp of a large body of armed
Pro-slavery fighters fresh from the South.
He carried a surveyor's tripod and chain.
He ^^ sighted a line" through the centre

64 JOHN BROWN

of their camp^ and with, his sons began
chaining the distance. The pro-slavery
band supposed him to be a govern-
ment surveyor, and, consequently, a Pro-
slavery man ; and they did not interfere.
Brown counted them, and noted their
strength. More than that, he engaged
them in conversation, and got out of
them the betrayal of a plan for a raid on
^^ Old Brown and his gang '' !

There was a good deal of pretence of
law, and a good deal of invocation of
the ^^ sacred authority of the United
States, '^ on the part of the Pro-slavery
authorities in Missouri and Kansas at
this time, but no real law. The lives of
Brown and his sons were threatened by
men who were perfectly capable of
taking them. A Pro-slavery grand
jury "indicted'^ the Free State Hotel
at Lawrence, which the abolitionists had
turned into a sort of fortress, and sent a
posse, under a "United States deputy mar-
shal, to destroy it. On May 22, Brown

JOHK BROWN 55

and others, with one small company of
mounted men, and John Brown, Jr.,
with another, started to the defence of
this building and of Lawrence j but
to Brown's great disgust the Lawrence
people decided to make no resistance to
a United States officer, and the place
was ravaged. Brown was further in-
furiated by the refusal of the people
at Osawatomie to make a brave stand
against the Missourians. Beyond doubt
he reached the conclusion that a blow of
desperate violence must be struck to
arouse the people and overcome the ten-
dency which he saw on the part of the
Free State people to temporize, to waver.
He ako, doubtless, believed his own life
to be in danger.

Getting together a small party of
trusted men, John Brown went on the
night of May 24 to the shores of Potta-
watomie creek, where lived several Pro-
slavery men who had terrorized the
neighborhood. He called them one by

56 JOHN BEOWK

one out of their beds, and put five of
them to death, — not with his own hands,
but with those of men who obeyed his
command. This deed was committed
near a place called Dutch Henry's Cross-
ing, after one of the men whom Brown
killed.

Brown had not the smallest doubt that
he was directed by Providence in these
^ ' executions, ' ' as he called them ; though
he never sought to evade his personal re-
sponsibility for them, and talked of
them as being committed in cold blood.
The party did not kill all they took, but
carried off several as prisoners. There
is a Kansas legend, hen trovato at least,
that, on the morning after the Potta-
watomie executions. Brown called his fol-
lowers and his captives together for di-
vine worship in his camp, and raised to
Heaven in fervent invocation hands to
which still clung the dried blood of his
victims of the night. Sanborn notes in
this terrible deed the evident prompting

JOHN BEOWN 57

of the story of Gideon's night exploit in
overthrowing the altar of Baal. The
killings were certainly committed in true
Biblical fashion, — with rude curved
swords ^^made like the Boman short-
sword, " which Brown himself had car-
ried to Kansas from Akron, Ohio, where
they had belonged to a militia artillery
company then disbanded. Brown had
previously had the swords fastened on
sticks to use as pikes, but for this occa-
sion he had separated them from the
sticks and ground them to a good edge.
Brown evidently had a sort of Berserker
fondness for a good blade, as two or three
subsequent incidents in his life proved.

This fearful deed on the Pottawatomie
sent a thrill of horror through the whole
country. The Free State leaders repudi-
ated and condemned it, but before long
admitted that it was putting backbone
into their people. Terror was certainly
struck into the Pro-slavery ranks. It
soon became perfectly well known that

58 JOHN BEOWN

Brown was the author of the deed. The
Missourians waited until he and his sons
were all absent in the direction of Law-
rence, and swooped down on their
houses, burning them to the ground.
The federal military authorities also be-
stirred themselves; and John, Jr., and
Jason were taken prisoners by them, and
kept in chains for some time. The
younger John Brown had, from anxi-
ety, from horror at the thought of his
father having committed the Pottawa-
tomie murders, joined very likely with
a tendency inherited from his mother,
become temporarily insane. Meantime
John Brown the elder, with nine men,
and one Oaptain Shore, with eigh-
teen, encountered and attacked, on
June 2, in a ravine at a place called
Black Jack, a considerable force of
Pro-slavery men under a Virginian
named H. Clay Pate. There was a
fierce fight, with Brown in command
on the Free State side. Through ma-

JOHN^ BEOWN 69

noBuvring, some wounds, and evidently
some running away, Brown's force
was reduced to nine, including himself ;
and to these nine men Pate and twenty-
one well-armed men soon surrendered
unconditionally. It was an astonish-
ingly brilliant little victory. All of
Pate's men laid down their arms on the
ground for these nine Free State men to
pick up, and were marched off into cap-
tivity after the signing of an agreement
with Brown that an exchange of prison-
ers was to be effected, man for man, until
all the Free State men held by the
authorities were liberated 5 and John
Brown caused it to be specified that
his sons were to be the first men ex-
changed.

A picturesque story concerning this
battle has been told me by Mrs. Cteorge
L. Stearns, of Medford, widow of the
wealthy merchant of Boston who sup-
plied Brown with a great part of the
funds which enabled him to do his cam-

60 JOHN BEOWN

paigning. In 1859, on the occasion of
his very last visit before the Harper's
Ferry raid, — when, in fact, he was start-
ing for that final desperate adventure, —
Brown was leaving Mr. Stearns's house.
He paused near the door, bent down,
and drew something from his boot-leg.
"I shall very likely never return, Mr.
Steams," he said j "and I wish to give
you a little personal memento of my-
self." He handed out a remarkably
fine bowie-knife which he gave to Mr.
Stearns, at the same time telling its
story ; this knife is still in Mrs. Stearns's
possession ; it is a large, beautiful, and
well-balanced blade, broad, yet tapering
neatly to a sharp point } it is of l^glish
make. It had been bought. Brown said,
by a subscription, for Jefferson Buford,
and, when that Southern chieftain had
been discomfited in Kansas and his band
scattered, he had passed it on to the
Virginian Clay Pate, with the injunc-
tion that it was to be used in taking the

JOHN BEOWN 61

life of Old John Brown. When Brown
captured Pate at Black Jack, this knife,
hanging at Pate's belt, instantly at-
tracted Brown's eye. "I will thank
you for that knife," he said. Pate de-
murred, and declared that there was a
special reason why he did not wish to
give it up. Brown demanded to know
the reason. ^^Well, the fact is,'' Pate
said at last, ^^that knife was given me
to put an end to your career with. Cap-
tain Brown." Brown took the knife,
slung it on his belt, and then said,
^^ Well, it seems that the Almighty had
other designs concerning it!" One
can imagine Brown's fine repression of
any tendency to smile as he made this
response. His humor was grim, but it
was unquestionably present. He also
took a sabre from Pate's lieutenant, and
kept it until he found use for it in a deal
for pikes in Connecticut.

As Brown rode away with the prison-
ers taken in this admirable fight, in-

62 JOHN BEOWN

tending to make nse of them in procuring
the liberation of his sons, he fell in, un-
luckily, with a body of "United States
troops under Colonel Sumner, a Massa-
chusetts man, an anti-slavery sympa-
thizer, and afterward a successful com-
mander on the federal side in the Civil
War. Brown was too good a soldier to
suppose that, with some nine or ten men
and with twenty-two prisoners on his
hands, he could successfully engage a
large force of United States dragoons,
even if he had cared to make a direct
issue then with the United States au-
thorities. But he came ojvenly and
parleyed with Colonel Sumner as if he
were his equal, and Sumner seems to
have done the same with him. There
was a most impressive incident at this
meeting. Brown was at that time
charged with murder on the Pottawa-
tomie, with treason and conspiracy 5 and
a price had been put on his head. He was
several times an outlaw. A civil officer

JOHIJ BEOWN 63

accompanied Sumner 5 and the colonel,
who must have estimated the situation
cleverly, sympathizing with Brown and
yet feeling bound to do his duty, turned
to this civil officer, and said, "Have
you not some warrants to serve heref
The man looked at Brown, standing
there armed to the teeth, tall, with
terrible eye. No one in Kansas believed
that the old man would allow himself to
be taken alive. "I — I see no one that
I have a warrant against," the civil
officer said. If this were a scene in a
play, one can imagine the silence, and
then the applause.

So Colonel Sumner, who could hardly
do less, or more, compelled Brown to re-
lease his prisoners, and ordered him to
disband his own party, but did not un-
dertake to disarm one of them. Brown's
men "disbanded" — and banded again
a mile or two further on, and kept up
their guerilla warfare.

Within no very long time Brown's

64 JOHN BEOWN

sons were given their liberty. He and
they fought and lived on the prairies and
in the golcheS; and shook and burned
with fever and ague^ and sometimes
lived for days almost without food, and
bushwhacked on.

Mr. W. A. Phillips, who was after-
ward member of Congress from Kansas
and a general in the Civil War, and
obviously a man of cultivation, has left
an account of a night passed with Brown
at this period, in the midst of all the
fighting. They slept in the open air
under the same blanket, and talked,
certainly in a very unsoldierly manner,
all night, about the stars, about politics,
about«the rights of man. The talk ran
on until after midnight, and at last
Brown impressed Phillips greatly by
telling him, from the evidence of the
position of certain stars which were now
exactly over their heads, that it was
two o'clock 5 and, without a wink of
sleep, Brown called his men, who re-

JOHN BEOWN 65

sponded with alacrity. In less than
ten minutes the company had saddled,
packed, mounted, and was on the way
to Topeka. Brown refused to follow the
road, but insisted on taking a straight
course across the country, guided only
by the stars ; and they had a rough time
of it, floundering in the thickets and
crossing streams.

Brown carried his wounded son-in-
law, Henry Thompson, into Iowa, to be
taken care of, and in August returned
to the Kansas war-path again, doing
some sharp skirmishing, at first in com-
pany with and under the leadership of
James H. Lane. Brown commanded the
^^ Kansas Cavalry" in these encounters.
On the 30th of August Brown's son
Frederick was shot and killed, appar-
ently in cold blood, by a Pro-slavery
preacher named White. The sort of
life Brown was leading now, and the
work he was doing, is told well in a
letter which he wrote from Lawrence to

66 JOHN BEOWN

his wife and children in New York State
on the 7th of September, 1856. ^*I
have one moment to write to you,'^ he
said, ^^to say that I am yet alive, that
Jason and his family were well yester-
day ; John and family, I hear, are well,
he being yet a prisoner. On the morn-
ing of the 30th of August an attack was
made by the Buffians on Osawatomie,
numbering some four hundred, by whose
scouts our dear Frederick was shot dead
without warning, he supposing them to
be Free State men, as near as we can
learn. One other man, a cousin of Mr.
Adair [his son-in-law], was murdered
by them about the time that Frederick
was killed, and one badly wounded at
the same time. At this time I was about
three miles off, where I had some four-
teen or fifteen men over night that I had
just enlisted to service under me as
regulars. These I collected as well as I
could, with some twelve or fifteen more ;
and in about three quarters of an hour

JOHN BEOWN 67

I attacked them from a wood with thick
undergrowth. With this force we threw
them into confusion for about fifteen or
twenty minutes, during which time we
killed or wounded from seventy to
eighty of the enemy — as they say — and
then we escaped as well as we could, with
one killed while escaping, two or three
wounded, and as many more missing.
Four or five Free State men were butch-
ered during the day in all. Jason
fought bravely by my side during the
fight, and escaped with me, he being un-
hurt. I was struck by a partly spent
grape, cannister or rifle shot, which
bruised me some, but did not injure
me seriously. * Hitherto the Lord has
helped me,' in spite of my afflictions. . . .
May the God of our Fathers save and
bless you all !"

This fight was the one commonly called
"the battle of Osawatomie," though
there were two other fights at or near
that place. Brown's methods were-

68 JOHN BEOWN

frankly those of the guerilla. He liber-
ated many slaves, ^nd, as the phrase
went in Kansas, incidentally converted
many Pro-slavery horses and cattle to
Free State principles. At this time a
Pro-slavery federal governor, Geary,
was vainly trying to reduce the con-
stantly increasing Free State population
to submission. Finally, the Missourians
and other Southerners raised a force of
twenty-seven hundred men for a last at-
tack on the Anti-slavery stronghold,
Lawrence. They were resisted by the
Free State men in force. Naturally,
Brown was there. He assembled the
people in the street on September 16,
1856, and made them a speech, which
was reported in the papers. It is so
good that it could hardly have been an
invention: it deserves to rank as «
classic amongst fighting exhortations of
the sort : —

"Gtentlemen, — It is said there are
twenty-five hundred Missourians down at

JOHN BEOWN 69

Franklin^ and that they will be here in
two hours. You can see for yourselves
the smoke they are making by setting fire
to the houses in that town. Now is prob-
ably the last opportunity you will have
of seeing a fight, so you had better do
your best If they should come up and
attack us, don't yell and make a great
noise, but remain perfectly silent and
still, wait till they get within twenty-
five yards of you, get a good object, be
sure you see the hind sight of your gun,
then fire. A great deal of powder and
lead and very precious time is wasted
by shooting too high. You had better
aim at their legs than at their heads. In
either case, be sure of the hind sights of
your guns. It is from neglect of this
that I myself have so many times es-
caped ; for, if all the bullets that have
been aimed at me had hit, I should have
been as full of holes as a riddle. "

The Missourians made their onset.
Brown commanded the Free State ad-

70 JOHN BEOWIf

vance-guard. He had some men armed
with nothing but pitchforks, but they
were not in the advance line. A brass
cannon was brought out to support his
rifles. There was some desultory firing ;
and then the Missourians, seeing, no
doubt, that the Lawrence men were en-
tirely ready for them, withdrew in good
order.

Eeally, the Kansas battle was now
won. Free State men had poured into
the Territory. Slavery was impossible
there : slave property could not be held,
largely as the result of Brown's fierce
guerilla warfare. He had seen clearly
enough that the Territory could not be
made a slave State if no slave could be
peaceably held there. But now his mis-
sion, as the wielder of the sword of the
Lord and of Gideon, called him else-
where. He had a larger field in view.
Whether as early as the end of 1856 he
contemplated an attack in the neighbor-
hood of Harper's Ferry, is not clearly

JOHN BEOWN 71

known. Bnt he certainly had further
and more extensive operations against
slavery in mind. To carry them out, it
was necessary to have money. There
was money, and there were rich aboli-
tionists, in Boston 5 and there Brown
went to beg. And there he begged with
as much pertinacity and insistence as he
had fought. There were rifles to buy
and move, men to subsist and trans-
port, a blow to be struck.

V.

George Luther Stearns, a mer-
chant of Boston, resident in the town
of Medford close by, — a man of wealth
and character and fine spirit, — was the
mainspring of John Brown's campaign
in Kansas and afterward in Virginia,
though he seldom knew, and never took
pains to find out, exactly what Brown
was doing with his money. There were
at work in New England, with their
direction centred in Boston, two com-
mittees which had much to do with mak-
ing Kansas a free State, — the Kansas
committee of Massachusetts and the
New England Emigrant Aid Company.
Nominally, their chief work was to colo-
nize men in Kansas who could be de-
pended on to vote against slavery.
Towns were established there, and their
settlers furnished with arms by these and
other Elansas committees. Infiuential
in the work were Mr. Steams, Dr.

JOHN BROWN 73

Samuel G. Howe, Dr. Samuel Cabot,
Jr., Eli Thayer, and Frank B. Sanborn.
Mr. Sanborn was a young man, just out
of college, of marked energy, individu-
ality, earnestness and ability, then as
now. Brown liked him well, visited
him, wrote to him, made use of his
abilities in raising money, and finally
tried to get him to join him in the
Virginia raid. The "friends of Kan-
sas" in Massachusetts bought two hun-
dred Sharpe's rifles and sent them to
Brown in Iowa, intending them for use
in E^ansas. They never went further
than an Iowa town named Tabor, where
for a time Brown had his headquarters
when he was not "operating" in Kan-
sas. We shall see what became of them.
John Brown came to Boston in De-
cember, 1S56, — the very year of the
Pottawatomie killings, — and was hospi-
tably received by some of the most radi-
cal of the Anti-slavery men, and espe-
cially by Steams and Sanborn.

74 JOHN BROW]^

object^ as lie annonnced it to these two^
and as Sanborn reports it, was to raise
money with which to arm and equip a
hundred mounted men for defence and
reprisal in Kansas. He gave it to be
understood, however, that he wished to
be at liberty to use the arms and money
in his own way. He succeeded in get-
ting a good deal of money. Mr. Steams
gave Brown agood deal of cash, and, first
and last, undoubtedly paid him several
thousand dollars. Brown had his family
at l^orth Elba to support, and naturally
expected that, inasmuch as he was giving
all his time and much of the time of two
or three minor sons to the work, his
family should have some support firom
the committees. His wife and young
children certainly had no more at any
time than the bare necessaries of life.
Brown was now Captain John Brown,
and a person of such wide reputation
that, when he went about on the Kansas
business, he found it ^convenient to

JOHN BEOWN 76

travel under an assumed name ; and his
favorite ^* alias'' was ^^ Nelson Hawk-
ins." He made a speech under his own
name — for in Massachusetts he could
safely be John Brown — before a com-
mittee of the Massachusetts legislature
and a large audience^ urging a State ap-
propriation in support of the Kansas
committee's work. It was refused ; but
his appeal certainly helped him in his
work, and his reception by the legisla-
tive committee gave him standing.

Brown visited his family at North
Elba in the early spring of 1857, went
to Connecticut, made speeches and col-
lected money, got the granite tombstone
of his grandfather, Captain John Brown,
there and sent it to North Elba to be set
up and inscribed with his son Frederick's
name, and^ eventually, with his own.
At Collinsville, in Connecticut, he con-
tracted for the manufacture of a thou-
sand pikes or spears, saying that they
were intended for use in Kansas. The

76 JOHK BROWN

manufacturer exacted pay for the work
as he went along ; and the pikes were a
long time in preparing. When at last
they were finished, they went to Har-
per's Ferry, not to Kansas. They were
a likely weapon for negroes on Southern
plantations, who knew little about fire-
arms: for ranging frontiersmen on the
E^ansas plains they were the last sort of
weapon that any one would think of.
There seems little doubt that Brown's
explanation to the Connecticut manu-
£a>cturer was a subterfuge, and that he
intended the pikes for a negro insur-
rection somewhere. The fact that he
paid for them slowly, keeping them
hanging, so to speak, a long time, does
not indicate that he really intended them
for use in Kansas. He found money to
pay for them before he needed them in
Virginia. He could not prevent the
shipment of the two hundred Sharpens
rifies of the Kansas Aid committee as
far west as lowa^but there is fair ground

JOHN BROWN 77

for presumption that lie never intended
that they should go any further.

Beating up and down the East in this
money-getting work, Brown did another
thing that proved he had a new plan,
and also, perhaps, showed the influence
of his reading of the Life of Oliver Crom-
well. Somewhat like Cromwell, he de-
veloped military tastes and took up a
fighting career late in life, without a
military training. When it had be-
come desirable for Cromwell to have
something of a soldier's education, he
had found an adventurer of Dutch ex-
traction, John Dalbier by name, who
had seen much service abroad, and ihade
use of him as a military "coach." - In
New York Brown met an Englishman,
— so he is called^ at any rate, thoigh
the name betrays Scottish extraction^ —
named Hugh Forbes, who was said to
have been with Garibaldi and to have
done good fighting in the European
revolutionary attempts of 1848. BroTi'u

78 JOHN BEOWN

seems to have been greafcly taken with
Forbes, andtp^^6.ve recognized in him
his John Dall>l^ He made an arrange-
ment with l^ra to instruct him and his
^' young men" in the military art, at
some chosen place, for one hundred dol-
lars a month, advancing him six hun-
dred dollars.

Meantime the political war in E^ansas
had become lively again, and Brown
was implored by several of the leaders
to come back to the Territory. He wrote
them encouragingly, but was busy accu-
mulating supplies and munitions, and
getting them to Tabor and Springdale,
low^ where he actually assembled "his
young men," as he called the devoted
band of followers who went with him to
Virginia. "Jim" Lane, the military
commander of the Free State forces in
tbe Territory, had made Brown a gen-
eral, and, addressing him as such, begged
him to come on with his guns. Brown
replied from Tabor that his health would

JOHN BROWN 79

not permit, — which seems very strange
(if he had really intended to go) in a
man who had resolutely lived an out-
law's life in Elansas while extremely ill
with fever, and had then [shown no hesi-
tation about risking his health at every
turn. The fact was that he did not wish
to put the two hundred precious Sharpens
. rifles^ which Lane knew he had^ and
was eagerly trying to get, into the hands
of Kansas bushwhaickers. He knew that;
if he did, he would never get them back
again. Nor did he propose to reveal the
plan for the Yirginia raid to the Kansas
people.

The Eastern Anti-slavery folk were also
egging Brown on to go to Elansas and
'^give them some backbone." They
were as yet in the dark as to his schemes.
These Eastern people had agreed to pay
Gerrit Smith one thousand dollars for
the farm which Brown's family occupied
in the Adirondacks : they did give it at
last, but the money came very slowly.

80 JOHN BROWN

It seems extraordinary at this distance
that Smithy a rich man^ who certainly
spent a great deal of money in the Anti-
slavery cause^ and who gave Brown three
hundred dollars in cash at about this
time, should have been willing to take
money nominally from Brown for his
rocky acres.

On his way to the West from Ohio,
Brown wrote a strange and pathetic let-
ter to his wife and children. "If I
should never return," he said, "it is my
particular request that no other monu-
ment be used to keep me in remembrance
than the same plain one that records the
death of my grandfather and son; and
that a short story, like those already on
it, be told of John Brown, the fifth,
under that of grandfather." This refers
to the tombstone of his grandfather,
which he had removed from Connecticut
to North Elba. The request tells the
story of his pride in his Puritan lineage.
It betrays his own strong feeling that he

JOHK BROWI^ 81

was going to do something which might
make his name famous, and that this
something was in a high degree haz-
ardous. ^'I think I have several good
reasons for this," he went on in his let-
ter. ^' I would be glad that my posterity
should not only remember their parent-
age, but also the cause they labored in.
I do not expect to leave these parts
under four or five days, and will try to
write again before I go off. I am much
confused in mind, and cannot remember
what I wish to write." A long letter
which Brown wrote from Iowa to F. B.
Sanborn shows that his heart was very
heavy at this time. His family were
practically unprovided for, ill-lodged,
poorly fed, and his young children not
at school. He felt strongly that he had
parted from them forever. Yet some-
thing drove him on irresistibly: no press-
ure could have made him turn back.
He was, moreover, out of conceit with
all the leading influences then working

82 JOHN BROWN

against slavery. The abolitionistS; he
said, ^* would never effect anything by
their milk-and-water principles/' and
the Republican party was of no account,
since it was opposed to "meddling with
slavery" in the States where it existed.
For his part^ he lived to meddle with it
wherever it was. Peace, he said, was
but an empty word. He was certainly
now preparing to maike war.

In September, 1857, he had assembled
in Iowa his little company of young
men for military instruction under the
adventurer Forbes. These young men
had for the most part served witii him
in Kansas : a few were new recruits.
They were a chosen lot, of energy
and fierce principle, but trusting Brown
completely and going unquestioningly
where he bade them. Several of them
afterward died with him at Harper's
Ferry. One of their best was John
Henry . Kagi, or Keagy, a native of
Ohio, of Swiss extraction, a tall young

JOHK BROWK 83

fellow of twenty- three, with the air of a
divinity student, but an agnostic in
his religious views, as were most of
the company. Kagi had been a teacher
and a newspaper correspondent. An-
other was John Edwin Ck)ok, a young
Connecticut Yankee who had studied at
Yale, but did not graduate 5 a talkative,
very captivating fellow, who wrote poor
verses and caused Brown some uneasi-
ness by his tendency to prattle. An-
other was Edwin Ooppoc, Qua^c^r-bred,
a jolly, brown-eyed youth, but quiet in
his ways and the essence of devotion to
Brown. Of very much such material as
this the whole party was made. The
men were inclined to revolutionary
radicalism 5 they were fall of "views,"
and were a perpetual debating society
wherever they went. Brown, the only
old man in the group, unlike them in
his foundation motive and his manner of
life, dominated them completely, and
knew that, with all their prattling, they

84 JOHN BROWlSr

would -die for him. Eichard Eealf, the
poet, and Eichard J. Hinton, a journal-
ist, both Englishmen, were for a time
in Brown's band. He designed nearly
every one of them to be the captain of a
black legion, when he should have the
blacks raised in rebellion against their
masters. His drill-master Forbes had
deserted him ; and he replaced him with
Aaron Dwight Stephens, one of his
Kansas fighters, who had been a soldier
in the United States army. This man
proved true, to the grave.

Cook declares that Brown had told
him that the ultimate destination of the
expedition was Virginia. Without the
knowledge or consent of Mr. Steams or
the other Massachusetts aiders and abet-
tors of his plans, Brown shipped the
Sharpens rifles and revolvers, which had
been given him for ^^work in B^ansas,''
and also other stores, such as blankets
and clothing, back to Conneaut, Ohio,
on their way to Virginia. iN'o doubt he

JOHN BEOWN 85

knew that Mr. Stearns preferred that he
should carry out his own plans without
consulting and involving him. Perhaps
he did not care what any one thought
about it. He communicated his plans
gradually to his best trusted "young
men." Edwin Coppoc said at Harper's
Ferry, "The whole company was op-
posed to making the first demonstration
at Harper's Ferry ; but Captain Brown
would have his way, and we had to obey
orders. ' ' Everything seemed going well.
Brown intended to strike in April or
May, 1868. He went East, visited
Frederick Douglass in February, 1868,
and sketched quite fully the Virginia
plot to him. He had to beg more
money from his Massachusetts sup-
porters. He did not disclose his plans
to them at this time, only saying
that "railroad business," by which, of
course, he meant liberating slaves, "on
a somewhat extended scale," was his
object. Meantime his enemies supposed
that he was hiding in Kansas.

86 JOHN BROWN

He soon came on to Grerrit Smith's
house at Peterboro, New York ; and
to that place on Feb. 22, 1858, F. B.
Sanborn and Thomas Wentworth Hig-
ginson went, at Brown's urgent invita-
tion. There, to Gerrit Smith, to Hig-
ginson, to Sanborn, and to Smith's sec-
retary, Edwin Morton, Brown unfolded
a scheme for a raid in Virginia. He
read a long "constitution" which he
had drawn up for the government h^
was to establish. It was a wordy, boyish
document, and seems to have special
reference and adaptation to the negro
character. It somewhat paradoxically
asserted devotion to the Constitution and
flag of the United States. Brown, for
that matter, thought of his war as one
against the slaveholders, not against the
government. He wanted eight hundred
dollars to begin the work of his revolu-
tion with !

Brown's hearers were thunder-struck,
and used every argument they could

JOHN BEOWN 87

think of against the scheme. Hour after
hour they talked and contended, Brown
answering volubly every objection,
^^But it is utterly hopeless to undertake
so vast a work with such slender
means," they exclaimed; and Brown
answered, "If God be for us, who can
be against ust" In his mind this was
answer enough. Besides, he already had
his men and his munitions ; and they
were on their way. The work had
begun. He would not give it up.

*^You see how it is, " said Gerrit
Smith : ^^our dear old friend has made
up his mind to this course, and cannot
be-tumed from it. We cannot give him
up to die alone ; we must support him.
I will raise so many hundred dollars for
him : you must lay the case before your
friends in Massachusetts, and perhaps
they will do the same. I see no other
way. ''

There was no other way. It was John
Brown's rebellion. The moneyed aboli-

88 JOHN BEOWN

tionislB had only to ratify his decision.
In connection with this enforced ratifi-
cation; Mr. Sanborn patly quotes Ed-
win Ck)ppoc's remark to the authorities
at Harper's Ferry: "Ah, gentlemen,
you don't know Captain Brown : when
he wants a man to do a thing, he does
it." Brown knew his die .was cast.
He did not go to North Elba for two
months, but visited Boston (whence he
carried five hundred dollars in gold),
New York and Philadelphia, turning
various stones to forward his plans. He
wrote to his daughter Euth, imploring
her to let her husband, Henry Thompson,
who had fought with him in Kansas,
join him again ; and though Thompson,
who had already been wounded in Kan-
sas, did not go with him once more, his
two brothers did. Brown wrote to San-
born for copies of Plutarch's Lives,
Irving' s "Life of Washington," the
"best Life of Napoleon, and other simi-
lar books," together with maps and sta-

JOHN BROWN 89

tistics of Southern States, for his " young
men" to read.

Having made a brief visit to his
family, Brown went to Chatham, in Can-
ada West, to organize a conspiracy
among the negroes from the United
States who had taken refuge there, — a
band of men influential among their
race. There, in May, he held a secret
convention. Twelve of his young men
were with him, and there was a small
attendance of trusted colored men.
Brown's constitution, which he had read
at Oerrit Smith's, was submitted to the
meeting, and adopted. Brown made a
strong sx>eech, declaring his plan in a
general way, but sajring nothing about
Harper's Ferry. In fact, one of the
members of the convention has declared
that he supposed the ^^work" was to be
done in Kansas. Yet to some at least
Brown seems to have made it clear that,
when his blow for the negroes had been
struck, they would come ^^ to the moun-

\

\

90 JOHN BEOWN

tains" to join him, and that there he
proposed to operate, making the chain
of the Appalachians his base. By flock-
ing to his standard; the blacks would en-
able him to harass the plantations on
either side of the range ; and he believed
that he could establish impregnable jk)-
sitions in the mountains. He expected
that the rising would become general
through the Southern States ; and; when
it had become sO; he would organize the
freed blacks under his provisional con-
stitution.

Brown was made commander-in-chief
under this constitution, John Henry
Kagi Secretary of War, Bichard Eealf
Secretary of State, Owen Brown Treas-
urer, and George B. Gill Secretary of
the Treasury. All of these were white ;
but two colored men were made "mem-
bers of Congress." The whole organi-
\zation was the absurdest boys' play,
iinless we are to consider it a part of
Brown's plan to impress the negroes

JOHN BROWl^ 91

with high-sounding proceedings of ap-
parent great importance. But Brown
was capable of magnificent boyishness
on occasion. I am inclined to regard all
this as a part of it rather than as a
more or less insincere device to dazzle
the negroes.

Brown intended to start for Virginia
very soon. His own plans were matured.
But meantime a great scare had been
caused among the Eastern abolitionists
by the threat of Hugh Forbes, Brown's
late drill-master, to denounce the whole
conspiracy to the government if he were
not paid certain sums of money. Claim-
ing that Brown had not paid him all he
agreed, he conveyed this threat in letters
to Senators Wilson and Sumner and
other Bepublicans who were not in the
secret. They went to Sanborn and
Stearns, and there was wide consterna-
tion. Several thought that the whole
plan would have to be given up. As a
matter of fact, it was put ofT on this ac-

92 JOHN BEOWN

count for folly a year. Brown was not
greatly worried, — certainly not at all
alarmed. He used some crafb to stay
Forbes' s hand. He went to Boston^ and
Steams induced him not to proceed for
a time. It was thought best that Brown
should go back to Kansas, apparently
to resume his regular work there, but
with the real object of confusing Forbes.
Meantime Forbes somehow "disap-
I)eared," as Hinton, who was one of
Brown's men, expresses it, '^wholly
from our vision." Yet he wrote a com-
munication to the New York HercUd in
October, 1859, and was later somewhat
vaguely reported as fighting with Gari-
baldi again in Italy. It is dear that
he never really betrayed the conspiracy
to the government. Brown was asked
by Steams to take back to Kansas th^
arms and munitions that he had collected,
but he did not. He went there at the
end of June, 1868, empty-handed and
with much relutance, feeling that he was
giving up large game for smaller.

VI.

But Brown had not been back in
Kansas long before he had a trail of fire
behind him. He had grown a long
white beard, which was, for a time at
least, an effectual disguise. He went
under the name of Shubel Morgan there,
being still an outlaw, and immediately
organized a company of fighting men.
Disorder and reprisals had by no means
ceased. Brown was soon very ill with
fever, but for the most part kept the
field. His letters show that his thoughts
were on the Virginia expedition. Time
hung a little heavily on his hands ; and,
when midwinter came, he made a slave-
liberating foray into Missouri which
was one of the most brilliant and the-
atrical exploits of his life.

It was toward the end of December
when a negro man came over from Mis-
souri, and told Brown that he, his wife,
two children, and another negro man

94 JOHN BEOWN

were to be sold within a day or two, and
begged for help to get away. Brown,
according to one of his companions,
George B. Gill, was waiting for some-
thing to tnm up, and accepted this call
as heaven-sent. He at once organized
two parties of men, and within twenty-
four hours rode into Missouri. With
one of the parties he surrounded the
place where the five negroes were kept,
and summoned the people to surrender.
They did so. Brown took the slaves,
and also certain property belonging to
the estate, including horses and wagons.
He had a theory that this property was
made by the labor of the negroes, and
rightfully belonged to them. At any rate,
they were entitled to means of convey-
ance. Then he went on to another
plantation, seized five more slaves and
more of the ^^ negroes' property,'' and
captured two white men. The other
party, under Brown's man, Stephens,
did not do so well. A white man was

JOHN BEOWK 96

killed while resisting the liberation of a
negro, and the party got but one slave.

Brown ran his party of fugitives and
captives over into Kansas, liberated his
prisoners there, and deliberately organ-
ized a flight — with the negroes — to
Canada I It was midwinter, and the
negro women and children had to be
transported in slowly lumbering Cones-
toga wagons. By this time rewards
were offered for Brown even by the Free
State authorities of Kansas, so that he
was doubly and trebly an outlaw. This
attempt would have proved Brown^s in-
sanity if he had not actually accom-
plished the feat Inasmuch as he ac-
complished it, it proved his genius.

The Free Stsite men — the best of them,
at any rate — gave him shelter and
helped him. to conceal his captives, but
protested against his act. Even Augus-
tus Wattles, a Quaker and a loyal friend
of Brown's, said to him: "You ought
not to do this. Kansas is too greatly

JOHIf BEO^
' "Well," ao!
"I ■will soon remove the 1
trouble elsewhere." Ottaw
ladian, who had befriended lisa-t
ntunerable times, now sheltered ui>U*
him once more, though his prcvint* 1
to Brown had cost him all his
possessions, destroyed by the
rians. Brown went on with his i
over a frozen road. On the '
of the black women gave birth Mj
who was promptly named John 1
Knowing that a band of Missom-iid
lying in wait for him, a party <
twenty-three yonng Kansans, wh^
not the fear of the Territory's rnlel
cantions connselloTs before their-l
started ont with them. They i
Missonrians in ambush on the op]
shore of Mnddy creek, covering al
They rode straight at them by ]
command, and pnt the whole paJ
ignominious flight. Five of this t
party Brown captured and marchcd3

JOHN BROWN 97

him a considerable distance. He did not
deem it prudent to allow them to ride
their horses, lest they should escape and
betray his whereabouts ; but, after the
very knightly way he had of treating
his prisoners, he dismounted and went
on foot with them all night, ^^to show
that he meant them no nnkindness."
In the morning, after he had prayed
over them, he told them to make their
way back home as best they might.
Naturally, he retained their horses ; and
we can imagine that the tired men were
long in reaching home.

Brown's little party marched on,
undergoing fearful hardships. Brown
himself was found by a kindly abolition-
ist on the way to be without under-
clothing in the frightful cold and snow-
drifts. Nobody knew to what negro
refugee he had given his own garments.
The fugitives were pursued, but they
managed to get into Nebraska safely ;
and from there on Brown begged his

98 JOHK BROWK

way, the negroes being met now and
then with demonstrations of welcome
and rejoicing, but often with cold repro-
bation. He reached Chatham, Canada,
in March, 1859, with all his fugitives
alive and well. Then he went to Ohio,
and at Cleveland sold his captured Mis-
souri horses and mules at public sale,
^^ warning the purchasers," Mr. Sanborn
says, ^^that there might be a defect in
the title. '^

He made sure that his Virginia stores
were safe. His son John had kept the
two hundred rifles and other arms and
munitions, first in a furniture warehouse
at Cherry Valley, Ohio, covered over
with ready-made coffins, and then, upon
an alarm, in an abolitionist farmer's
bam. In the early summer of 1859 John
Brown, Jr., shipped themas ^^hardware"
to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, which
was only forty-five miles from Harper's
Ferry, Virginia. The curtain was about
to rise on the last act of the tragedy.

VIL

John Brown went now, grave and
severe, liis whole nature breathing a
terrible earnestness, to New England,
demanding rather than asking fresh sup-
port for the reorganization of his band.
He talked at Concord Town Hall, and
the sight and thought of him inspired
Concord to an unwonted fire. He im-
pressed the i)eople with his marvellous
simplicity. ^^He is so transparent,"
Emerson said, ^^that all men see him
through." Emerson, Thoreau, and Al-
cott went to hear him; and no one
of them ever wrote anything better than
the praise that each one lavished, at this
moment, on the old fanatic. These ora-
cles of Concord spoke of Brown as if
they had seen a spirit.

Brown was much at the house of
Mr. and Mrs. Steams at Medford, his
truest friends and most generous bene-
factors and supporters. They endured

>

100 JOHK BROWIf

ostracism and the scorn of their own
kin on his account ; but they knew him
to be great, and believed him to be
good. He visited Frank B. Sanborn.
From all those people and from Grer-
rit Smith, Brown raised something more
than two thousand dollars. He got a
brief glimpse of his family at Korth
Elba ; he assembled his '^young men'^
as well as he could^ or saw that they
had employment where he could call
them to him at any moment, and fi-
nally, in June, 1859, appeared with his
two sons, Owen and Oliver, at Gham-
bersburg, Pennsylvania, where he set up
a fictitious hardware business under the
name of Isaac Smith & Sons. This
fiction was to enable him to receive
and ship "goods." He paid what was
still due of the one thousand dollars
which he had promised for his pikes in
Connecticut, and had this hardware abo
sent to him at ChamberslDurg. Then he
and his sons went, on July 3, to Har-

JOHN BROWN 101

per^s Perry, leaving John Henry Kagi in
charge of the business at Ghambersburg.
Brown had had his lieutenant^ John R ;.
Cook, living in the vicinity of Har- ■
per's Ferry for some time, spying out the
ground. The young man had blended
himself so thoroughly with the life of
the people that he had married a Vir-
ginian's daughter. But he left her, and
came to John Brown.

Brown and his sons walked about the
hilly farming country on the northern
side of the Potomac, opposite Harper's
Ferry, prospecting for a base of opera-
tions. They were Isaac Smith and his
two sons; they had been farmers in
northern New York, but the frosts there
cut off their crops till they were sick of
it. They had also made a business of
buying up fat cattle and driving them
into New York. They thought they
could combine this business with a little
£3u*ming in this favorable region. The
Maryland country people, simple-hearted

102 JOHN BEOWIf

and hospitable, accepted this explana-
tion without suspicion. The men looked
honest and respectable, and spoke well
and frankly. Brown hired a farm-house
and cabin, called the Kennedy place,
in a retired situation amidst the woods
about four miles from the Potomac.
They took up their residence on this
place. Martha Brown, the wife of young
Oliver Brown, and Anne, John Brown's
daughter, now sixteen years old, came
on to keep house for them. The neigh-
borhood people visited them occasion-
ally, and found nothing suspicious about
them. But meantime Brown, little by
little, was, with consummate cleverness,
getting his boxes of rifles and pikes and
other munitions down from Chambers-
burg, partly by wagon and partly by
rail, and storing them in the cabiiu^ux^ .
Steams and Sanborn and Gterrit Smith
did not know that he was doing these
things nor where he was going to strike.
They did not want to know what he was

JOHK BEOWK 103

doing, and he was careful not to inform
them. He wrote home to his wife a
good deal of advice about the farming
operations at North Elba. His son
Watson, and the brothers of his son-in-
law, the two young Thompsons, who
were as faithful to him as sons, came on
and joined him ; and so did others of the
^^ young men.'' They spent their time
mostly in hiding about the Kennedy
place. John Brown, Jr., worked hard
in shipping the freight — that is, the
war material — to Harper's Perry and
in doing various errands for his father
in connection with the business. He
went to Canada for him, and to Boston.
By the end of August Brown wrote to
his son, ^^Our freight is principally
here." About that time Frederick
Douglass, the most famous, intelligent,
and influential colored man in America,
went to Ohambersburg to see Brown.
This was at Brown's urgent request. In
a way, Douglass held the key to the

I

104 JOHN •BROWIsr

hearts of the negroes ; and Brown seems
to have estimated his influence at a high
figure. At the time of the meeting^
Brown was fishing in an old flooded
stone quarry somewhere near Chambers-
burg. Douglass has left an account of
the interview. It is interesting, and
none the less so because, like Douglass's
story of his interview with Brown in
1847, it shows some traces of the embel-
lishment of a lively imagination.

Brown, Douglass, Shields Green (a
negro whom Douglass had brought with
him), and Kagi sat down to talk while
Brown fished. Brown frankly declared
his purpose to take the United States
arsenal at Harper's Perry, and from
there to proceed to the mountains.
Douglass, opposed the plan earnestly.
It would, he said, ^^be fatal to all en-
gaged; it would be an attack on the
federal government, and would array
the whole country against us." Doug-
lass was for starting the movement in

JOHN BEOWN" 105

the mountains, and drawing the slaves \
up there. Brown said he could keep \
the Virginians off, for a sufl&cient time, ';
at Harper's Perry by means of the
prominent men whom he would take
and hold as hostages, and that the very
boldness of the blow would instantly /
arouse the whole Korth, And here^
came another great scene. Neither man
could convince the other. Brown, who
seemed to suspect a little timidity in
Douglass, got up and put his arms
around him. ^*Come with me,'' he
said : ^^I will defend you with my life !
I want you for a special purpose. When
I strike, the bees will begin to swarm ;
and I shall want you to help hive them."
Douglass refused. Turning to the plan-
tation negro, Shields Green, who was a
runaway slave whom he had harbored,
Douglass said, ^^Well, Green, what have
you decided to do t " and the black man
answered, ^^I b'lieve I'll go wid de ole
man!" At Harper's Ferry, Green re-

106 JOHN BEOWN

fused to take advantage of an opportu-
nity to escape, and went back and died
like a hero with Brown. This man's
willing sacrifice of his life was one of
many smaller heroic tragedies which
were absorbed in the greater one.

Douglass's plan may have been better
|than Brown's ; but, if he had been a
jhero, he would have gone when Brown
/ implored him. Douglass' s defection was,
in a way, a prophecy of the feilure of the
negro race to support Brown 5 but Brown
himself was of the type of men who would
accept an isolated act like Shields Green's
heroic devotion as a favorable omen, dis-
regarding the more significant act of the
other. John Brown's own sons disap-
proved the blow at Harper's Ferry. He
confessed to his son Owen that he felt
profound discouragenient at this opposi-
tion, and said to his men, ^^ As you are
opposed to the plan of attacking here, I
will resign : we will choose another
leader, and I will fadthfolly obey." He

JOHN BEOWK 107

did resign. Within five minutes the
band voted for a leader. Brown was
unanimously re-elected. The choice of
any other man would have been as
absurd and as impossible as the election
of a successor for Bonaparte before Aus-
terlitz. Prom that time forward there
was no talk of any other plan than his.
The time was near in which the women
must be sent away. The blow was ready.
Brown wrote on September 8 to his
wife and children at North Elba^ who
were consulting him about details of
farm management: '^It now appears
likely that Martha and Anne will be on
their way home in the course of a month,
but they may be detained to a little later
I)eriod. I do not know what to advise
about fattening the old spotted cow, as
much will depend on what you have to
feed her with, whether your heifers will
come in or not next spring, also upon
her present condition. You must exer-
cise the best judgment you have in the

108 JOHN BROWIf

matter^ as I know but little abont your
crops. I should like to know more as
soon as I can."

^^The girls/' who had been of im-
mense service, who kept discreet watch
over the prattling conspirators in the
house and hustled them out of sight on
occasion, and who turned aside local
suspicion by their sweet and honest ways,
went home early in October. Mean-
time scenes of extraordinary strange-
ness were enacting at and around the
Kennedy place. Eighteen or twenty
men, mostly white, with three or four
colored^ were packed away there. They
played checkers, sang sentimental songs,
studied military books, put their large
stock of weapons into order, and argued
much and volubly on religious questions.
Brown^conducted some form of rdigious
worship every day, though his adherents
were mostly free thinkers. There was a
little congregation of Dunkers, or Wine-
brennarians, who held meetings in a

JOHN BROWN 109

school-house not far away ; and Brown
went and exhorted and preached to
them. Meantime he worried lest Cook's
loquacity should get him into trouble.
Some of the neighbors saw negroes at
the place, and suspected that old Isaac
Smith and his sons were running off
slaves. But they did nothing about it
The habitual apathy and indolence of
the Maryland population fought on
Brown's side.

A more alarming thing happened^
though Brown knew nothing of it.
Some one sent anonymously from Cin-
cinnati a letter to Mr. Floyd, Secretary
of War, warning him, in so many words,
that ^^Old John Brown, late of Kansas," /
had a party ready with which he was/
about to "pass down through Pennsyl-/
vania and Maryland and enter Yirgiuia
at Harper's Perry, with the purpose of
liberating and arming slaves." It was,
on the whole, a very accurate betrayal
of the whole scheme. There have been

110 JOHN BEOWIT

various conjectures as to the way in
which this information got out. The
identity of the man who sought to be-
tray the secret is now pretty well known.
It does not matter who he was. The
wonder is that the secret was not be-
trayed sooner. But once more the
Southern dolcefar niente came to Brown's
aid. Secretary Floyd received this letter
while he was pleasuring at a watering-
place, glanced it over, filed it away as
if it were a paper of some importance^
and did nothing more about it The
paper came out only after the blow had
been struck.

Brown ran over to Philadelphia on
the 10th or 11th of October, and
met there Francis Jackson Merriam, a
young man of good family in Boston,
who at once definitely and enthusias-
tically joined the desperate expedition.
Brown sent Merriam to Baltimore to
buy forty thousand percussion caps, and
the merchant who sold them was allowed

JOHN BROWN 111

to suppose that they were intended for
a filibustering expedition to Nicaragua.
These caps went safely to Harper's
Ferry ; and Merriam, who was said to
be in feeble health, and who was the
only ^* gentleman/' in the old sense of
the word, in the party, joined the band
at the Kennedy place as its humblest
member.

On Sunday, October 16, Brown rose
early^ and called all his men to wor-
ship. There were now twenty-two or
twenty-three men in the house. There
is radical disagreement as to whether
or not one John Anderson, a negro,
was present. There is no proof that
he was there. Without him there were
twenty-two men. John Brown was
commander-in-chie£ John Henry Kagi
was his adjutant and lieutenant. Aaron
Dwight Stephens, Owen Brown, Watson
Brown, Oliver Brown, John Edwin Cook,
and Charles Plummer Tidd were "cap-
tains'' 5 that is, they were to bear that

112 JOHN BROWK

rank in the negro army which was
soon to be organized. William Henry
Leeman; Albert Hazlett^ Jeremiah G.
Anderson, Edwin Coppoc, William
Thompson, and Dauphin Thompson were
lieutenants. The private soldiers were
Shields Green, Dangerfield Newby, John
A. Copeland, Osborne Perry Anderson,
and Sherrard Lewis Leary, negroes, and
Steward Taylor, Barclay Coppoc, and
Francis Jackson Merriam, white men.
This gentleman of Boston came last of all
in Brown's honorable roster. Brown
read a chapter in the Bible, and uttered
an earnest prayer for the success of his ex-
pedition. The men ate a solemn break-
fast, after which Brown called the roll
of his band. A sentinel was placed at
the door 5 and a ^'council meeting'^ was
held, with Osbom P. Anderson, a.colored . ,
man, in the chair. But the orders which
were to govern the proceedings of the
next night and day were subnutted by
Brown.

JOHN BEOWN 113

Every man's duty for at least twenty-
four hours had been carefully assigned
him. Three men — Owen Brown, Mer-
riam, and Barclay Coppoc, were ordered
to remain at the house and guard the
arms. All the rest were to proceed, as
soon as it was dark, silently to Harper's
Ferry, their weapons kept out of sight
Two men were to step aside before the
bridge over the Potomac was reached,
and tear down the telegraph wire. Two
men were to seize and hold the ferry
watchman, and two others to remain on
guard on the Potomac bridge and two
on the Shenandoah bridge until morn-
ing. Two were to occupy the fire en-
gine-house in the heart of the town,
while Hazlett and others were to cap-
ture the United States armory, Ste-
phens, with mien, was to go out into
the country and capture Colonel Lewis
Washington, a descendant of George
"Washington's brother, free his negroes,
seize as much of his property as was

114 JOHN BEOWK

availabley and tarn him and his negroes
over to the negro Osbom Anderson, who
was to bring them to the Ferry. Brown
himself was to go ahead of the band from
the Kennedy place, in a wagon loaded
with armS; and was to remain at Har-
per's Ferry in command. Stephens,
with a gang of his liberated n^roes
and horses and wagons, was to go back
to the Kennedy place, and bring down
the rifles, pikes, and other materials
stored there. Brown exx>ected soon to
have negro hands into which to put
every one of his one hundred and
ninety-fonr rifles and one thousand
pikes.

The council over and his orders pro-
mulgated to the band, it is asserted that
Brown went quietly over to the little
Dunker chapel and preached to the sini-
ple believers there. But it was not later
than eight o'clock in the evening when
he set out in his wagon, eighteen men
following in pairs behind him, for Har-

JOHN BEOWN 115

per's Ferry, His only speech before the
departure was this : '^ Men, get on your
arms: we will proceed to the Ferry."
He had a sledge-hammer and a crow-bar
thrown into the wagon. Always a little
bit of a fetichist, Brown got out an old
cap which he had worn in Kansas and
iput it on. He mounted the wagon, said,
"Come, boys,'' and drove down the
road. The night was cold and dark.
Before morning rain fell.

They reached the covered bridge over
the Potomac without adventure, crossed
until they were near the Virginia side,
and were there challenged by the soli-
tary watchman. They seized and held
him, and no alarm was given. The
bridge was left under guard of Watson
Brown, and Taylor. John Brown, with
ttie main party, went on to the armory
gate, broke it down with sledge-hammer
^and crow-bar, and entered the yard. A
watchman came out in alarm, and was
promptly seized. Brown sent one small

116 JOILN^ BEOWK

party to capture a building called the
rifle- works about half a mile from the
armory proper, and another to occupy
the arsenaL By this time the whole
village was practically in Brown' s hauds,
and not a shot had been fired. A con-
siderable number of citizens had been
picked up, but there was no general
alarm. About midnight an Irish watch-
man came down to relieve the other
watchman on the railroad bridge over
the Shenandoah, and found Oliver
Brown and WiUiam Thompson in
charge. He resisted arrest, and Thomp-
son fired at him, the bullet grazing his
scalp. This shot alarmed many of the
people in the town, who awoke to find
the place firmly in the possession of a
band of men of whose purposes and mo-
tives they knew absolutely nothing. '^^*^'
Stephens and Anderson brought in
Colonel Lewis Washington and his
negroes and some neighboring slave-
owners. Brown, who had set up his

JOHN BROWN 117

headquarters at the armory, received
these Virginians in a very courtly man-
ner^ and conducted them to a lire. Ste-
phens had brought from Washington's
house a sword which Frederick the
Great of Prussia had sent as a gifb to
Qeneral George Washington, and which
Lewis Washington had inherited. Brown
took this sword, and carried it proudly
until he was himself made a prisoner.
Colonel Washington was much impressed
by Brown's manner, and had no doubt
at all that the wearer of his ancestral
sword was in command of a large force.
At half-past one in the morning a
train came in from the west. It halted
at the bridge, finding the lights extin-
guished. A negro porter, who was sent
forward to see what was the matter, re-
fused to halt when challenged by the
guard, and was shot and mortally
wounded. Brown committed the mis-
take, which from this distance is inex-
plicable, of letting this train go on to

118 JOHN BEOWN

"Washington before morning with the
news of his foray. He had, either from
motives of policy or because it was
natural to him, adopted a somewhat
grand and condescending manner toward
these people. He knew he was playing
a tremendous game of "bluff." In the
main, he played it very well; but he
'^bluLffed" too far. He himself walked
over the bridge with the conductor of
the train, to satisfy him that it was safe ;
for the man suspected a trap. The train
sped on, to Brown's ruin.

The morning dawned with Brown in
full possession of the town. Many of
the citizens had not been awakened at
alL Captain Dangerfield, the clerk of
the armory, came to his office to begin
his day's work without any knowledge
of what had happened, and fell into : the
hands of the raiders. He thought they
were crazy men. Brown's men, rein-
forced by a few negroes from Washing-
ton's plantation, were busy making

JOHN BEOWN 119

prisoners. Bat, meantime^ other citi-
zens were arming themselves and spread-
ing the alarm about the country. The
attempt was now locally recognized as a
negro insurrection under the lead of an
unknown white man, who was called
"Captain Smith." The train which he
had allowed to proceed was bearing the
news to Washington and Baltimore.
The first accounts published in the
papers stated that the insurgents were
commanded by "one Captain Anderson,
who is about sixty years of age, with a
heavy white beard, — cool, collected, and
with a determined and desperate de-
meanor." These stories showed how
wholly by surprise the attack had taken
the country, and how completely "Old
John Brown" of Kansas had been lost
Sight ofl ^^i*

Brown's time had now come to leave
the town and take to the mountains.
Authorities agree that he might have
done this safely at any time up to nine

\
\

120 JOHN BEOWN

o'clock on Monday morning^ and prob-
ably he might have escaped at any time
before noon. By that time he had been
completely invested, in a little town
hemmed in by a broad river and high
hills. Why did he not got A great
deal of conjectore has been wasted on
this point. A newspaper reported him
as saying this, after his arrest: '^A
lenient feeUng towards the citizens led
me to parley with them as to a compro-
mise ; and by prevarication on their
part I was delayed until attacked, and
then in self-defence was comx>elled to
entrench myself." He certainly never
admitted that his sacrifice of himself and
his men was deliberate ; but he never
lamented it, and to his brother Freder- '
ick he wrote after his condemnation.
"I am folly persuaded that I am wofth'-'-i
inconceivably more to hang than for any
other purpose.''

There was scattered fighting all that
forenoon of October 17. Brown ran

Iv

JOHN BROWN 121

his prisoners into the engine-house,
where there were small windows and
port-holes which he could fire through.
Several of his men, including his son
Watson and William Thompson, were
shot and captured about the town. On
their part, his men killed several of the
townspeople. Some Maryland militia
came up, across the Potomac, but were
beaten back for a little time. Several
companies of Virginia militia arrived at
Harper's Perry in the course of the day.
The little garrisons at the rifle- works and
the armory were killed or captured, with
the exception of two men who escaped.
The bodies of Kagi, Leary, and Thomp-
son were hurled savagely into the Poto-
mac Biver. Owen Brown, the Bostonian
Merriam, and Barclay Coppoc, who were
4 . t^^ to move the arms down from the
Kennedy farm, found themselves cut off,
and, after some shooting from a distance,
fled to the North.
When Brown finally barricaded him-

122 JOHN BBOWN

self in the engine-house; he had but six
men with him. Ballets came whizzing
throngh the windows and doors. One of
Brown's sons fell, and died in a moment.
Oaptain Dangerfileld, in his story of the
fight in the engine-house^ says of this in-
cident : "Brown did not leave his post
at the iK>rt-hole ; but^ when the flighting
was over, he walked to his son's body,
straightened out his limbs, took off his
trappings, and then turned to me and
said, ^Hiis is the third son I have lost in
this cause.' Another son had been shot
in the morning, and was then dying,
having been brought in from the street;
Often during the affair in the engine-
house, when his men would want to fire
upon some one who might be seen pass-
ing, Brown would stop them, saying,
^ Don't shoot : ^that man is unarmed*^ P>i
Brown took suf&ciently good care of
his prisoners so that none of them
were hurt. They all gave him credit
afterward for perfect intrepidity and
coolness.

JOHN BEOWN 123

Early in the evening Colonel Eobert
E. Lee and lientenant J. E. B. Stuart^
both of them afterward famous as Con-
federate generals, arrived by train from
Washington with a company of United
States marines. Stuart came into the
engine-house with a light, under a flag
of truce, to parley. He exclaimed, on
seeing Brown, "Why, aren't you old
Osawatomie Brown of Kansas, whom I
once had there as my prisoner f "Yes,''
said Brown; ^ ^ but you did not keep me. ' '
This was the first intimation that the
Harper's Ferry people had of Brown's
identity. Stuart advised Brown to
"trust tio the clemency of the govern-
ment'' ; but Brown answered, "I prefer
to die just here." After two more of
his men had been killed, and more par-
leying :hiad' taken place, the marines got
a ladder, and, using it as a battering
ram, burst in the engine-house door
and poured into the room. Lieutenant
Israel Green, of the marines, leaped

124 JOHK BEOWK

upon Brown, struck him heavily with
his sabre in the head and face, cutting
and striking him several times after he
was down, and inflicting wounds which
were at first supposed to be mortal.

Brown was soon in the presence of the
Governor of Virginia, Henry S. Wise, of
Colonel Lee, and of a crowd of functioii-
aries and reporters, being subjected, as
he lay wounded and bleeding, to a
cross-examination as to his intentions and
purposes. We who have followed his
career know what his purposes were.
Under this riddling fire of questions,
Brown^s battered head was perfectly
dear. He summed the matter all up
in this sentence: "We are abolitionists
fix>m the Korth, come to take and release
your slaves.'^ The politicians tried to
get out of him something incriminating
the Bepublican leaders of the North.
Of course they did not succeed 5 for he
had had nothing to do with these. Ap-
parently, his questioners knew nothing

JOHN BEOWN 125

of Steams and the rest who were really
concerned.

A long report of his interview with
Senator Mason of Virginia^ Clement Val-
landigham, J. R B. Stuart^ and others,
printed in the New York Herald^ was
probably in the main correct. The re-
sponses attributed in it to Brown are all
characteristic of him. His clean-cut ex-
pressions flash out from the others' words
like fire. The report is a classic, quite
fit to be put in the reading-books. ' ' Who
sent you heret'^ asked Yallandigham.
"No man sent me here," said Brown. "I
acknowledge no master in human form."
"Did you get up the expedition your-
self!" "I did." He was asked "how
long he had been engaged in this busi-
ness," and he answered folly and truly,
^:^.iPromfithe breaking out of the diffi-
culties in Kansas." When they began
to question Stephens, who was also
wounded, Brown warned him to be
cautious in his answers. "You had

126 JOHN BEOWN

better^" lie said^ lifting Ms bleeding
head and surveying the crowd abont
him, — ^^yon had better, all you people
of the South, prepare yourselves for a
settlement of this question, — this negro
question : the end of that is not yet.''
' ^ These wounds were inflicted upon me, ' '
he also said, ^^both sabre cuts on my
head and bayonet stabs in different parts
of my body, some minutes after I had
ceased fighting and had consented to
surrender for the benefit of others, not
for my own." We may observe that
Brown took note of the fetct that he had
been struck by a sabre, not an ofBlcer's
customary sword. An ofBlcer of marines
would have been more likely to carry
a sword than a sabre ; but it happened
that Lieutenant Green did carry a sabre.
Brown seems to have watched the 'bLade
that fell upon his head and face.

The Virginians were anxious to know
whether his intention was to free the
slaves there or to carry them off 5 and

JOHN BEOWK 127

he declared that it was his intention to
set them free, not to carry them off.
^^But to set them free would sacrifice
the life of every man in this commu-
nity," he was told by one; and he
answered, "I do not think so.'' *^You
are fanatical I '' exclaimed the Virginian.
"And I," answered Brown, "think you
are fanatical. ^ Whom the Oods would
destroy, they first make mad' ; and you
ore mad." This the Virginians could
not understand. It was to them crazy
talk.

One man knew that Brown was not
crazy, and that was Governor Henry S.
Wise. Wise was a strong man, of large
mental measure. He recognized a man
of like measure in Brown. He said to
him oracularly, after his wont: "Mr.
Brown,. ;.the silver of your hair is red-
dened by the blood of crime 5 and you
should think upon eternity. You are
suffering from wounds perhaps fatal;
and, should you escape death from these

128 JOHN BEOWN

causes, yon must submit to a trial which
may involve death. Your confessions
justify the presumption that you will
be found guilty. It is better that you
should turn your attention to your
eternal future.'' And Brown answered
gravely, taking up a little of the gran-
diose tone of his tormentor, but improv-
ing on it with fine Yankee humor:
^^Gtovemor, I have, from all appear-
ances, not more than fifteen or twenty
years the start of you on the journey to
that eternity of which you kindly warn
me ; and, whether my time here shall be
fifteen months or fifteen days or fifteen
hours, I am equally prepared to go.
There is an eternity behind and an eter-
nity before ; and the little speck in the
centre, however long, is but compara-
tively a minute. The difference between
your tenure and mine is trifling, and I
therefore tell you to be prepared* I am
prepared. You all have a heavy re-
sponsibility, and it behooves you to pre-
pare more than it does me."

JOHK BEOWN 129

'^They are mistaken/' Wise said soon
afterward in a public speech at Eich-
mond, "who take Brown to be a mad-
man. He is a bundle of the best nerves
I ever saw, — cut and thrust and bleed-
ing and in bonds. He is a man of clear
heady of courage, fortitude, and simple
ingenuousness. He is cool, collected, and
indomitable. It is but just to say that
he was humane to his prisoners, and he
inspired me with great trust in his in-
tegrity as a man of truth.''

Brown's sons, Watson and Oliver, were
by this time dead, as were also William
and Dauphin Thompson, Kagi, Leeman,
Taylor, Leary, Jeremiah Anderson, and
Newby. Owen Brown, Cook, Tidd,
Barclay Goppoc, Merriam, Hazlett, and
Osbom Anderson were fagitives. Cook
and Hazlett being captured and brought
back for trial. The bodies of some of
the dead were atrociously and revolt-
ingly maltreated. Several of the bodies,
after being dragged and thrown about,

130 JOHK BROWN

were sent to the medical college at Win-
chester for dissection. The five men
named above were the only men of the
party who escaped death in the fighting
or on the gallows.

For Brown, of course, was tried, and
swiftly convicted of "treason, and con-
spiring and advising with slaves and
others to rebel, and of murder in the
first degree," and was sentenced to
death. The trial, which took place at
Charlestown, six miles from H^urper's
Perry, was opened on October 26 ; and
the verdict of conviction was brought
in on November 2. The proceedings,
though swift, were not unseemly, and
not unduly summary, considering the
excitement of the Yirginians, and their
great fear that a rescue would be at-
tempted fipom the North* . .., .;^.v

Brown was fisdrly well defended,
though by no strong or famous or
highly gifted counsel. He lay on a
mattress in the court-room, in heavy

JOHK BEOWN 131

chains, and gave his testimony from this
pallet. While in his ceU, he was kept
constantly and very heavily chained to
the floor. He denounced to the court
his lawyer's plea of insanity in his be-
half, declaring it to be *' a miserable
artifice.'' His wounds and general
health improved during his trial and
confinement A very strong guard of
militia was kept over him, and in the
streets of Charlestown and in Harper's
Perry. He refused to encourage an
attempt to rescue him, which might
very likely have been made if he had
been willing, saying at once, ^^I think
that my great object will be nearer its
accomplidiment by my death than by
my life" ; and by and by he said, after
reflection, "I would not walk out of
the prison if the door was left open«V

He was sentenced to be hung at
Charlestown on December 2. During
the month that he lay heavily chained,
awaiting execution, he slept as calmly

132 JOHN BROWN

as a child every night, and grew
stronger. He wrote a great many let-
terS; all of which appear to have been
faithfully forwarded. Several of these
were to his wife, who just before his
execution came to see him^ against his
advice^ and was admitted once, and went
away. His letters from his prison were
dignified, solemn, and somewhat wordy,
as if this terrible situation, and the op-
portunity to express himself which all
this letter- writing afforded, had led him
to abandon his customary succinctness
of expression. He wrote not one letter
to his old abolitionist correspondents aud
supporters, knowing that to write to
them would direct suspicion toward
these men. But to Mary Steams, wife
of his chief benefactor, at Medford, he
did write a very simple, eloquent letter
of farewell.

On the appointed day Brown was
taken to the gallows in a wagon, in the
presence of a great force of Virginian

JOHN BEOWN 133

soldiery of all arms. From the seat of
the wagon he had a prospect of the
great hills, — Appalachian brothers of
those amidst which he was born,
had made his home at North Elba, and
had already ordered that his body
should be buried. He paid no atten-
tion to the crowd and the soldiery, but
those hills filled him with new emo-
tion. ^^This is a beautiftQ country,''
he exclaimed to his attendants. ^^I
have not cast my eyes on it before;
that is, in this direction." The best
Virginian account of his execution is
that written by Parke Poindexter, then
a soldier in the Eichmond company of
militia, who held the ^'post of honor''
at the gallows, and was afterward a
colonel in the Confederate army. "I
witnessed the whole proceeding," says
Poindexter. ^* Brown mounted the scaf-
fold as calmly and quietly as if he had
been going to his dinner. He did not
exhibit the slightest excitement or fear.

134 JOHN BEOWN

Not a musde moved^ nor was there the
slightest nervous excitement He stood
erect and calm, as if he were upon
posf

This was not the end of John Brown,
as all the world knows. His name and
his strange, direct, simple influence were
soon imbedded in the history and song
of his country. I have repeated above
what the large-minded Gtovemor Wise
of Virginia said of Brown, when he
was in prison and in chains. It was in
praise of Brown's honesty and courage.
More than four years afterward, when
the Civil War had been fought and its
results were declared, a Union general,
in Wise's presence, mentioned the name
of John Brown. Whereupon the Vir-
ginian quickly said: "John Brown!
John Brown was a great man, sir. John
Brown was a great man ! "

BIBLIOGEAPHY.

A surprising amonnt of literature,
largely controversial, has been written
about John Brown. His story has in-
spired the authors of several nationali-
ties. It would be impracticable to give
here a. list of all these publications.
Several years ago the titles in Dr.
Featherstonehaugh's bibliography of
Brown, which included formal magazine
articles, numbered eighty. I shall men-
tion the books and articles of chief im-
portance.

I. The Pubuo Life of Captain John
Bbown. By James Bedpath. (Boston,
1860: Thayer & Eldridge.) This was
the first biography of Brown to appear.
. It contained much personal testimony,
e^ecially relating to Kansas matters,
but was fragmentary and altogether par-
tisan, and contained errors.

IL Senate Eepobt ON THE Invasion OP

136 BIBLIOGEAPHY

ELajbpeb's Febby, By a Select Oom-
mittee of the United States Senate.
Senate Eeports, 'No. 278, Thirty-sixth
Congress, First Session, Vol. 11.

III. A Voice from Harper's Ferry.
By Osborn Perry Anderson. (Boston,
1861: Privately printed.)

IV. John Brown. By Victor Hugo.
Paris, 1861 : Dnsacq & Cie.) Contains
Hugo's own drawing of Brown on the gal-
lows, marked Pro Christo sumt Ghristus.

V. Life and Letters of John Brown,
with Notices of Some of his Confederates.
By Richard D. Webb. (London, 1861 :
Smith, Elder & Co. )

VI. Life AND Letters OF John Brown.
By F. B. Sanborn. (Boston, 1886 : Eob-
erts Brothers.) This is a really monu--^
mental work, of six hundred and thirty- '
two pages. Its author was a personal
friend of Brown, and in his confidence
through his last years. It is necessarily

BIBLIOGEAPHY 137

the foundation of all study of Brown's
life. It presents a great body, but not
the whole, of Brown's existing letters to
his family and others.

VII. Century Magazine^ June, 1885.
'^ John Brown at Harper's Perry." By
John B. P. Daingerfield.

VIII. John Brown. By Dr. Hermann
Von Hoist. Edited by Prank Preston
Steams. (Boston, 1888 : Cupples, TJp-
ham & Hurd. )

IX. The Kansas Crusade. By Eli
Thayer. (Kew York, 1889: Harper
Brothers. )

X. Andover Beview, December, 1890-
January, 1891. '^Preludes of Harper's
Ferry." By Wendell P. Garrison.

XI. The Kansas CkDNFUCT. By Charles
Eobinson. (New York, 1892 : Harper
Brothers. )

XII. John Brown and his Men. By
Bichard J. Hinton. (New York, 1894 :

138 BIBLICX^RAPHY

Punk & W ignalls Company. ) Another
volume CO] taining much personal testi-
mony. It is especially valuable for the
minuteness )f the account of the Harper's
Ferry Raii and for its information about
Brown's cc upanions.

XIII. Thi Life of Henby S. Wise.
By Barton 11. Wise. (Kew York, 1899 :
The Macn illan Company.) An inter-
esting and familiar book, written by the
grandson oc the governor.

The beacon BIOGRAPHIES.

M. A. DeWOLFE HOWE, Editor,

The aim of this series is to furnish brief, read-
able, and authentic accounts of the lives of those
Americans whose personalities have impressed
themselves most deeply on the character and
history of their country. On account of the
length of the more formal lives, often running
into large volumes, the average busy man and
woman have not the time or hardly the inclina-
tion to acquaint themselves with American bi-
ography. In the present series everything that
' such a reader would ordinarily care to know is
given by writers of special competence, who
possess in full measure the best contemporary
point of view. Each volume is equipped with
a frontispiece portrait, a calendar of important
dates, and a brief bibliography for further read-
ing. Finally, the volumes are printed in a form
convenient for reading and for carrying handily
in the pocket.

KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO.

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Paternoster House, Charing Cross Road, London

[over.]

The beacon BIOGRAPHIES.

The following volmnes are the first isnied: —

John Brown, by Joseph Edgak Chambekun.
Phillips Brooks, by the Editok.
Aaron Bnrr, by Henry Childs Mskwui.

Frederick Douglass, by Cmakles W. Chesnott.
David Glasgow Farragut, by James Baenes.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, by Mrs. James T. Fields.

Robert E. Lee, by W. P. Teent.

James Rossell Lowell, by Edwaeo Eybeett Hale, Jr.

Thomas Paine, by Elleey Sedgwick.

Daniel Webster, by Nokman Hapgood.

The following are among those in preparation; —

John James Andnbon, byJoHM Bueeoughs.
£dwin Booth, by Chaeles Townsend Copklamd.

James Fenimore Cooper, by W. B. Shubeick Cltmse.
Benjamin Franklin, by Linosat Swift. «^

Sam Houston, by Sarak Barnwell Eluott.

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